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sga_flashficTitle: The Superhuman Crew
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU/mashup
Spoilers: none
Pairings: McShep, others implied
Summary: Eight years later, Rodney gets an unexpected visitor with some surprising news.
Disclaimer: SGA belongs to MGM. Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore. Dr. Who belongs to the BBC. The title at some point related to Bob Dylan. I think that covers it.
Notes: This may be the first in a longer series of pseudo-brainy mashup fics I dream of writing to explore the idea of fanfic as literary criticism, or, you know, not. You can't really play with the concept of timeline in a prose work they way you can in a graphic novel, but I figured my attempt at honoring Moore's awesometasticality made this fitting for the Backstory challenge. All hail MA andlofro for getting me to actually read Watchmen in the first place.
The Superhuman Crew
By Mad Maudlin
The lock was broken. Rodney had already insert the key before his mind registered the splintered wood of both door and frame, the scuff marks in a generic waffle pattern—like someone had kicked it in, kicked and kicked until the wood yielded, graceless and direct. He noted little things, like the sheer size of those footprints and the places where the tread had been worn to smoothness, with one part of his mind—the part that wasn't already gibbering in panic, panic and a seedy sort of anticipation, because Jesus H. Christ, someone was in his house, had broken into his house, what if they got his stereo or his laptop or his other laptop or his work laptop or his favorite laptop, oh, god, the basement, what if the little bastards had gotten into the basement—?
He pushed the door open and eased his way inside, forgoing the lights in case the invaders (oh, yeah, like this needed any extra melodrama) were still around. The living room was deserted and, by the street lights seeping in through the windows, apparently undisturbed—all computers and peripherals intact, at first glance, and nothing broken or even moved. There was a light coming from down the hall though, a stripe of shocking white from the CFLs Jeannie had made him install. He thought he saw it flicker, a shadow of movement. The angle meant the kitchen. Had somebody broken into his house to steal his coffee supply? Maybe lace it with citric acid? Or—no, oh, no, surely not the basement?
He reached behind the couch for the baseball bat he kept back there—that John had kept back there, back in the day, the (bad/good) old days. As if to remind him of just how old those days were, one of his hips popped, loud and painless, as he crouched down, and his attempt to steady himself on the couch ended up shoving it two or so inches to the right with a great honk of scraping floorboards. Rodney froze.
"You sneaking up on me, McKay?" John asked, suddenly right there—or maybe he'd been there all along, invisible, intangible, waiting for precisely the right moment to materialize and make Rodney scream like a girl.
"Like that's even possible," he snapped back, once he recognized his alleged assailant. "Also, would it kill you to let me know ahead of time when you're going to break into my house? I'd stock up on your favorite water."
"Budweiser is an American institution," John said with a little pout. "And you better not let people hear you say that in costume, or they're going to figure out that the smartest American hero is a dirty Canadian spy."
Rodney just snorted, and realized he was still holding the baseball bat. "Remind me why you wanted me to have this thing?" he asked, tossing it behind the couch among the dust bunnies. "And the question about announcing yourself still stands."
John sighed, and Rodney realized for a second that he really was holding himself together—no wings, no halo, just a tired-looking, skinny guy in an ugly flannel shirt and dark jeans. It had to hurt like hell. "I'm still an officer in the United States Air Force, Rodney."
"Yes, yes, and Bush's sop to the moral majority means the government has final say on where you put your penis, I get that," Rodney said. "But hasn't it occurred to you that you could, I don't know, strip the memories from people's minds, or teleport yourself through time, or maybe kill Jerry Falwell with your brain? I mean, baseball bats?"
"Which you still went for," John pointed out wryly.
Rodney cleared his throat, and busied himself hanging up his jacket. "Well, unlike some of us, I've managed to keep my secret identity secret all this time. It wouldn't exactly be conducive to my cover if I started whipping out sonic screwdrivers and laser blasters, would it?"
"Oh, of course," John said, without even trying to sound sincere. "Because all community-college physics teachers can argue string theory with Stephen Hawking and win."
"You're the one who instigated that," Rodney reminded him irately, but, well, that had been one of his finer hours, hadn't it? Too bad it had just been an email exchange, something to crow about among friends, and not carried live on CNN or something. "So," he said, once his jacket and briefcase were as carefully-arranged as they were going to get, "sex before food, or after?"
That actually made John laugh, laugh and relax, until the light started to seep out around his edges. "Who said I'm here for sex?" he asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. "Maybe I just heard you got the new Star Wars boxed set."
"Right, because you'd go AWOL for Carrie Fisher." Rodney never knew how to start these things, no matter how many times they'd done it; he settled for stepping close and putting his hands on John's hips, soaking in the terrific heat of him. Every time he seemed even warmer than the last.
"You got me," John said, low and husky, and ran his own hands up Rodney's back, over his shirt. The light grew brighter, the permanent halo that marked John out as America's savior and a walking quantum singularity. "Guess that's why they call you Doctor."
"Smartest man alive," Rodney said. He pressed his face into John's neck, feeling the little snaps of static there, and that unbelievable heat.
"Thought that was the Hierophant," John said, untucking Rodney's shirt.
"What, you think that little fetishist—?"
But then John was kissing him, and the light was growing brighter and brighter, and Rodney had no thoughts to spare for the competition; there was only John, and the light, and John, John, John.
He held his breath for a moment, fingers tightening on the dusty wood, but there was no further movement or noise from the kitchen. Maybe he'd just imagined the intruders from the beginning. Maybe they were already gone.
Right. Maybe people just kicked in his door for fun.
Rodney tried to ease his way down the hall, bat held high, half-wishing for a force disrupter instead of a Louisville Slugger. Any shred of surprise he may have been clinging to was disrupted when Sarah Jane came prancing out of the kitchen, tail held in the air, meowing a greeting. He tried to wave her off, but she just coiled around his legs, begging for her supper. There was still no movement from inside the kitchen, and perhaps that meant he really was alone, missing out on his own home invasion; Sarah Jane had gone quite grumpy in her old age, and generally hid under the bed hissing at strangers, not following them into the kitchen. Unless they'd left the fridge open, in which case she might've been feasting on leftover tuna casserole instead.
He eased the kitchen door open, slowly, as if that mattered with the cat yowling at his heels, and had one moment to register an enormous shape moving at him—
--knocking him face-first into a puddle of good-God-he-didn't-want-to-know. Sarah Jane yowled somewhere nearby, but Rodney was more concerned with a)getting out of the puddle before he caught something, and b) his assailant, who now appeared to be, uh, skeet shooting.
At least, that's what it reminded Rodney of, the way the razor-edged disks—circular saw blades, probably—came shooting out of the slot in the wall that he hadn't noticed until now. And the big man in the body armor was standing right where Rodney had been a second ago, right in the line of fire, deflecting each Frisbee of Death with a shot from some kind of enormous, probably illegal machine pistol. "What the hell are you doing?" Rodney demanded, once he'd gotten his feet and gotten Sarah Jane safely back to her perch on his shoulder.
"Saving you," the man said. His mask was one of those barely-there little dominos, the kind that shouldn't be as good as hiding your face as it was, though Rodney himself was much too paranoid to trust his identity to something you could buy in packs of twelve every Halloween. The gunman had a tangle of wild dreadlocks and biceps as big around as Rodney's thighs; he reloaded smoothly without missing a shot. "What are you doing?"
"Well, until you so gracefully interrupted us," Rodney said, checking that all his tools were still safely tucked away, "I was preparing to shut down Foursight's counterfeiting operation."
The gunman spared him a glance. "With a cat?"
"She's my lookout."
"Missed this."
"Yes, thank you, I'd gathered that information—" Rodney watched him reload again, pulling a clip off his belt; how many blades was this contraption loaded with? And here he'd thought these old steam tunnels would be an unguarded way in. "Uh, just out of curiosity, how many clips do you have left?"
"One." The gunman glanced at him. "You?"
"Me? Are you kidding?" Rodney started feeling through his coat for parts; just because he hadn't expected trouble didn't mean he hadn't planned on it. "I don't like guns."
"Gun's saving you now," the other said.
"Not for long," Rodney said, fitting the pieces smoothly together. Thank God he'd invested in some quality gloves; in the old pair he would've dropped something by now.
The gunman just grunted, and when he fired his last round he dropped down smoothly into a crouch, well below the level of the saw-blade contraption. He tried to drag Rodney back down, but by that time Rodney had the pulse pistol assembled; he dodged the great grasping hand, narrowly ducked another blade while the capacitor charged, and then blew out the blade-shooter's electrical system with a blast of electromagnetic static. There were, sadly, no dramatic showers of sparks or smoke; the last blade just got jammed in the slot.
He pretended to blow smoke off the pistol's dish anyway, and smirked at the burly newcomer, who was looking at him with suspicion. "What's you do?" he growled.
"Fried its electrical system," Rodney said. "Electromagnetic pulse pistol. Kills anything with a battery or a plug at fifty feet."
"Where'd you get it?"
Rodney eyed the newcomer's form-fitting leather and Kevlar; aside from a few things clipped to his Sam Browne belt and the, ah, large sword on his back, he was traveling light. "Some of us," he said, "have pockets. I'm the Doctor, by the way. And you are…?"
There was a moment of hesitation before the bigger man took Rodney's offered hand; he had a grip that could crack eggs. "The Runner."
"Hmm. Really. And exactly are you running from?"
Rodney was smart enough not to hang onto the bat in a fight he couldn't win, though he did kind of resent being held against the wall of his own kitchen, one meaty forearm across his throat, and a blast-gun that he had built himself pressed into his face. It was only for a moment, anyway, before the Runner recognized him. Then he spit out the half-a-hot-dog dangling from his mouth and stepped back. "McKay. Long time no see."
"Not long enough," Rodney said, probing his neck for any lasting damage. He had to teach in the morning, he couldn't go in looking like he'd tried to hang himself. "Don't you have other refrigerators to raid? And I'll have you know that lock was expensive. I may have to get a whole new door."
Sarah Jane had sniffed at the fallen piece of hot dog, but, seeing that Rodney wasn't going to open up the Fancy Feast, she followed the Runner back to the table, purring. She'd always been lousy judge of character.
The Runner sat down and pulled another cold hot dog out of the package; he'd also been into a can of baked beans, Rodney's beer stash, and the condiments. He put a generous squiggle of fluorescent yellow mustard on a hot dog and bit off half of it before announcing, "Colonel Justice is dead."
For a moment Rodney forgot how to breathe—
--because he hadn't designed his costume with tear gas in mind. He had to peel up part of his mask to get the rebreather on, and couldn't pull it down again completely; instead, he used his scarf to cover any bits of exposed skin that might conceivably give him away.
Outside the airship, the one John had always called Rodney's dinky little puddle-jumper, Colonel Justice was firing rubber bullets seeming at random into the fog left by the gas. "I see you, you little shit!" he bellowed into his megaphone, and Rodney heard a yelp of pain somewhere in the shadows. A single can of spray paint came rolling into the twin cones of the airship's main lights, joining the scattering of protest signs and the little blue flags the police union had been distributing.
In thirty seconds, they'd turned Times Square into a ghost town.
Justice got bored of shooting at shadows eventually, and made his way back to the airship. "Where's your buddies tonight, anyway?" he asked, voice tinny through his own rebreather. He wore body armor, like the Runner, but it was accented in gaudy stars and stripes, not solid black. Some of the stripes were a little scratched.
"Archangel is with Athena in Washington," Rodney said, nudging somebody's fallen purse with his foot. It occurred to him to start rounding up any missing personal effects, so they could be returned to the rightful owners…somehow. "Shadow's laying low for, uh, family reasons. The Runner's…somewhere in Brooklyn, probably."
"Probably?" Justice snorted, as he busied himself with putting a fresh clip into his rifle. "Thought the bunch of you were real good buddies and all."
"We mostly work alone these days," Rodney said defensively, and yeah, searching for personal effects was a good idea. At least they could drop them at the National Guard armory, if the police didn't break their picket lines. He found his flashlight and struck out into the drifting clouds of gas.
That didn't stop Colonel Justice from speechifying, though, and Rodney had forgotten the little ear microphones they were both wearing under their costumes. "Almost makes me agree with the cops, myself," he said, while Rodney kicked aside signs announcing WE WANT OUR POLICE and BADGES NOT MASKS. "Our kind, we work best alone. The gunslinger. The knight on his horse. Then it don't matter if you have an accident, or a day job, or if your backup just pussies out and starts doing voiceovers for P-B-fucking-S."
"The Hierophant made his choices," Rodney muttered, even if he'd been sharing more of less the same opinion of the newly-unmasked Daniel Jackson with John…come to think of it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd just sat down and talked to John. Archangel. Whatever he was now.
"That's what I'm saying," Justice said. "We all gotta make choices. Easier if you don't have to square that with anyone but God and yourself and maybe Congress."
"Maybe Congress?" The gas cloud was thinning, and Rodney spotted a woman's shoe half-covered by a crumpled banner. "What happened to Truth, Justice, and the America Way, Colonel?"
Silhouetted now in the airship's lights, Justice struck a pose with his rifle amidst the ruins of the protest. "You want the American way? You're looking at it."
Rodney reached the shoe and grabbed it. There was a foot inside. Throwing aside the folds of the banner, he realized sickly that there was a whole woman under there, not young, not pretty, wheezing in the drifting clouds of gas. Her tears and snot were mixed with blood, and there were splotches of blood on her clothes—she must've been trampled. "Oh, jesus—Colonel! Need some help over here!" He waved his light once, then fumbled through his pockets for a spare rebreather, even though it was probably too late.
Justice suddenly loomed over his shoulder, using the light on his rifle to trace the victim's twisted body. "What the hell—?"
"Help me get her into the airship," Rodney said, though there didn't seem to be any way to lift the woman without causing her more pain. She was barely conscious—a small blessing, at least. "We need to get her to the hospital."
"The mayor ordered us to hold the square," Justice said impassively.
"Which one, Tiananmen?" Rodney snapped. "She's dying. She's dying because of us."
Justice grumbled, but he helped Rodney fold over the banner into a sort of sling, and they moved the woman in one quick lurch. She cried out once, weakly, then really did pass out. Rodney fisted two corners of the banner, and started dragging her to the airship. "Aren't you helping?" he asked Justice.
"Mayor told us to hold the square," he repeated. "Besides, bitch was asking for it, joining this kind of crowd."
If Rodney hadn't been busy dragging the woman towards the airship, he would've stopped to gape. "What the—what kind of an attitude is that?"
Justice shrugged, painted shoulder pads exaggerating the gesture. "You normally take your perps to the hospital when you're done with them?"
"Mine don't usually need it!"
Rodney got as far as the ramp, on his own, before he had to stop for breath. He looked out over the square and wondered if there were other protestors, just like this woman, dying in the debris because of what they—he—had wrought. If he stopped to search, this one might die. If he left now, the rest certainly would. "We were supposed to protect them," he blurted between gasps, guilt merging into fear into irrational anger. "Who were we protecting them from?"
"Themselves," Justice answered, somewhere in the fog.
The banner-slash-travois came unfolded as Rodney dragged it up the ramp, and as he revved up the airship's engines he could read the entire question painted on it: WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?
"How—how do you know?" Rodney managed to stammer. "How? What happened?"
The Runner finished his hot dog. "Guy named Marshall Sumner went pavement diving last night. Police missed a hidden panel in his closet. Found the costume, some papers. He was Colonel Justice."
Rodney sat down, and when Sarah Jane climbed onto his knee he automatically started petting her. "Good," he finally said. "Good riddance. The man was…we worked the Kinsey Riots together. You know his record. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
The Runner wiped his face off. "You seen Ernest Littlefield lately?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Littlefield and Sumner used to work together." As if to emphasize it, the Runner tossed a creased old black-and-white photograph on the table. "When Sumner was just Captain Justice and Littlefield was the Submariner."
Rodney studied the photograph: yes, there was old Justice, shockingly young and not yet carrying an Uzi. And Ernest, who'd once taught Rodney quantum physics, in that absurd old diving suit he used to run around in. Catherine Langeford, the original Pallas Athena, though her costume showed more thigh that Sam's ever had and her spear didn't shoot balls of plasma. Jacob Carter in his War Eagle costume. All the other masks that Rodney had grown up idolizing…
"Well, I can't fault your ambitions," Littlefield said. He was talking to Rodney but looking out his window, over the quadrangle, or maybe at the little gold-toned statue of his Submariner suit on the sill. Rodney really hated it when people didn't look at him when they were talking to him. "But you do know the life of a masked adventurer isn't all adventure."
Because Littlefield wasn't looking at him, Rodney rolled his eyes. "I've got contingency plans, of course," he said. "I've already developed a couple of ways of moving around under stealth, and I'm looking into refitting an old armored car for transportation, and my costume is Kevlar-lined and completely concealing." He pulled the sketches out of his binder and pushed them across the desk.
Littlefield looked at them, the frowned after a bit. "This is a bit…hm…unorthodox, isn't it?"
Rodney wanted to scream. "Of course it is," he said slowly. "I said I wanted to imitate you, not clone you, didn't I? And you said yourself in your book that the old-fashioned costumes had all sorts of problems and vulnerabilities and, by the way, looked pretty stupid. I mean, look that that." He gestured at the copy of the book on Littlefield's shelf, the one autographed by half the people on the cover. "Most of you guys were wearing your underwear on the outside of your pants, except for you, of course, who could've been walking around naked in that contraption."
Littlefield looked hard at Rodney through narrowed eyes, and then looked back at the drawing. "A trench coat and a fedora hardly seem like a costume at all," he said.
"Exactly," Rodney said. "Stealth, practicality, not looking stupid. I got the idea from a TV show."
"Isn't that a potential breach of copyright?" Ernest asked.
Rodney gave the question a little wave. "That would require somebody to have heard of it. It's like a million years old—I saw it when I was a kid in Canada and it was already in reruns—and it's British, so nobody on this side of the ocean is going to care. Except for me, of course, because it's absolutely perfect. And did you notice the mask? I designed it myself, it's completely concealing, the fabric's breathable and there's a less than ten percent reduction in visibility—or, I mean, there will be when I actually make the final version. But the most recent prototype is testing out great."
That, more than anything else Rodney had said, seemed to get Littlefield's attention. "You've obviously put a lot of thought into this."
Rodney resisted the urge to shout Yes, hello, genius! "Of course I have," Rodney said. "I mean, you said in your book—"
"I know what I said in my own book, Mr. McKay," Ernest said firmly. "So let me rephrase my original question. The job of a masked adventurer is about more than costumes and gadgets. We had—we have a duty to the community, when we take up this job. So why is it that you want the responsibility?"
Rodney licked his lips. "I—uh, that is—I mean, somebody has to do it, right?"
"We do have police," Ernest said, looking slightly amused.
"Oh, yes, them," Rodney sighed, "idiots who wouldn't know what to do with a computer if I programmed it to find Jimmy Hoffa for them. They're great for getting drunks off the streets and spousal abuse and, and truancy, but I'm talking about the real stuff, the important stuff, the…you know what I'm talking about, you did it all!"
"I know it," Littlefield said, passing Rodney back his sketches. "I'm just not sure that you do."
"I've seen this picture before," Rodney finally said.
The Runner nodded. "Littlefield used a copy of it in his book. The one where he accused Sumner of war crimes in Vietnam."
Rodney looked up sharply. "You're not suggesting that Ernest—come on, that's absurd, he's like a hundred years old."
The Runner just drained a beer and stood up. "Maybe. Maybe not."
A cold feeling settled in Rodney's stomach. "Tell me you're not working this," he said. "Because you know they haven't forgotten that little present you left the police commissioner after the Kinsey Act passed. You're going to get yourself sent to prison."
"Sumner didn't just jump out that window," the Runner said stonily. His dreadlocks were wilder than ever and did a better job hiding his face than his mask did—though that was no longer the plastic domino, but something long-jawed and jagged, like Edvard Munch by way of West Africa.
"Maybe it was the Russians," Rodney suggested. "Or the Iranians—they weren't too happy about how he took Baghdad. Or like eight hundred other foreign governments. He is the greatest American hero after all…was, I mean."
"Sumner was protected," the Runner pointed out. "Only person with higher security is Archangel."
"Archangel doesn't need security," Rodney said flatly.
The Runner suddenly stood up and wiped his mouth off. "Thanks for the food. Watch your back." He picked up his sword and headed for the door."
"Wait," Rodney blurted, not just because the Runner had eaten all his hot dogs (and okay, they'd been in the fridge for like a month already, but there was a principle of the thing). Surprisingly, the Runner paused. "You should…I mean, somebody might've seen you come in. Did I never teach you anything about picking locks?"
"No."
Rodney sighed, and fished into his pocket for his keys. "My point being, it's probably safer if you use the basement exit. It comes out under—"
"I remember."
"Oh, Yes. Um. Of course you do." Rodney nudged Sarah Jane off his lap and went to unlock the basement door. No matter how often he went down there to clean, there was always the distinct smell of—
—smoke and blood, overpowering the mildew smell that emanated from the dark corners. Rodney swallowed hard (he felt like puking every time John did this) and made it the last few steps to the saggy old couch under the stairs. Shadow tumbled out of his arms like a rag doll, not moving. Shit, shit, shit.
He snatched up the ginormous first-aid kit Jeannie made him put together and dragged it back to the couch. There was a booklet on top, and he fumbled with it for endless minutes before he realized it was upside-down. With a frustrated curse, he threw it against the wall. Shadow's pulse was steady, that was good, and she was breathing normally despite the amount of smoke she must've inhaled. He ran his hands gently along her limbs, and flinched when he felt something shift in her right forearm that shouldn't have been able to. "Okay," he said out loud, because thinking for an audience always helped him focus (even if, as in this case, the audience consisted of one unconscious masked adventurer and Sarah Jane, observing benignly from the top step). "Okay, it's not breaking the skin, so we should splint it, and, uh, ice? Is ice good for broken bones?"
He went and found the booklet again, and followed the instructions for splinting the break. Shadow's costume might've looked skimpy and ridiculous—Rodney may have in fact called it a 'glorified bondage suit' when they first met—but the hard leather turned out to be concealing Kevlar and a few clever little ceramic strike plates where Kenmore's Frankenbugs had managed to claw through it. No bullet wounds, thank God, and the gashes from those monsters didn't even seem to be that deep—maybe most of the blood wasn't hers.
Rodney tried to feel around under her hood for any head injuries, but there was leather and padding there, too, or possibly just a lot of hair. Half the hood was hanging loose anyway from a nasty slash across her face, and he'd need to bandage that for her anyway, so it shouldn't have been that hard to just pull the hood away and check her properly.
Except…there was a reason people like them wore the masks. Suck it up, McKay, he told himself. You just had your hands all over her anyway, what's it matter if you see her face? Except he hadn't, until now—not hers or the Runner's. John's face was copyright to the Department of Defense, so he didn't exactly need a mask, but Rodney hadn't taken his off in front of John until the first time they fucked. Somehow, it seemed that intimate.
Rodney was spared his moment of uncertainty when Shadow started to stir. "You're all right," he said immediately, in case she woke up disoriented and started lashing out. "You're safe. John teleported us back to my lab, you've got a broken arm and probably a concussion considering how long you were unconscious."
He repeated variations on this two or three times before Shadow's eyes opened and fully focused on his face. "Doctor," she said hoarsely.
"Right," he said. "I mean, of course you're right, it's just—how do you feel? Any pain anywhere besides the arm?"
"I feel that I am going to be sick," Shadow said, and Rodney got the wastebasket from under his desk just in time.
"So that's probably a definite concussion," Rodney said, "but I haven't—I mean, I wasn't—I didn't take off your hood. To check. It didn't seem…I wanted to ask your permission."
She wiped her mouth clumsily with her left hand, then looked up at him. "My permission?"
"Well, it's a bit…personal, isn't it?" Rodney asked, and desperately hoped she'd agree so he didn't feel like an even bigger moron, because that sensation was neither familiar nor comfortable.
"Of course," Shadow said, though she was also smiling a bit. "I cannot get it with one hand."
So Rodney pulled off his gloves, and carefully undid the laces that secured Shadow's hood, up one side of her face and then the other. When she peeled it back, there was a funny, sharp line of grime on her cheeks that marked out the contours of the cowl. She had high cheekbones and honey-golden hair that had mostly escaped from a French braid. No Pallas Athena, of course, but a beautiful woman. And without the mask of Shadow, strangely small.
Rodney gently felt around the back of her head, and almost immediately located the bloody contusion. "That's gonna need stitches," he said. "Here, I've got some gauze pads in the kit, and triple antibiotic—"
"Doctor," she said. "I have shown you mine. Will you not show me yours?"
She was smiling a little mischievously in spite of the tremendous pain she had to be in, and Rodney blanked for a second before his hands flew to his face. "Oh! You mean—well, um, sure, I guess. I mean, I don't see why not. I—"
"You do not have to," Shadow said. "If it makes you uncomfortable."
"Of course it doesn't make me uncomfortable. Just gimme a minute." He doused the pad in triple antibiotic and gave it to her to press on the wound. Then he hung up his hat and pocketed his glasses (the HUD projected on the lenses was proving to be more of a nuisance than a bonus anyway). He had to unwind about half his scarf to get at the bottom edge of his mask, so it made sense to just take the whole thing off and hang it next to his hat, and he had the curious thought that he was undressing in front of her, uncloaking, taking off the Doctor altogether.
The mask clung uncomfortably to his sweaty face for a moment, and then it was off, and tucked away in his pocket. He looked at Shadow and smiled weakly, wondering what she was seeing—plain face, crooked mouth, pointy chin, prematurely receding hairline? "Hello," she finally said. "My name is Teyla."
"Huh? Oh. I mean, hi." He waved, weakly. "Rodney McKay."
"Pleased to meet you." Shadow—Teyla—looked around the lab. "This is where you work?"
"In my spare time." He'd almost forgotten that only John had been down here before. "Between, you know, the day job and the fighting crime and the inventing new physics."
"Why did Archangel send us here?"
Rodney found a bottle of water in the mini-fridge and offered it to her, along with a bottle of Tylenol, of which she took several. "Probably because it's connected to my house. We can get you cleaned up and changed, and then take you to the hospital from the front. Or I know a guy, we did some business together a few years back, he usually patches up Sarah Jane and I so I could give him a call if you don't want to explain this in an emergency room."
Teyla settled her head back on the couch cushions, still holding the gauze pad in place. "For the moment I wish to rest. I am very dizzy."
"Well, don't go to sleep," Rodney said immediately. "That's bad, very bad. You're not seeing double, are you?"
"No," she said. "This is not my first concussion, Rodney."
"Right. Of course." There was enough room on the end of the couch for him to sit, even with Teyla stretched out fully. She never seemed so short when she was masked and beating mutant insects with sticks. Sarah Jane came to his lap, purring, but quickly started investigating the smell of Teyla's boots. "Just, whenever you're ready, we can get changed—or finish changing—and go."
"I would like to wait for the others," Teyla said. "I assume they will follow us—"
On cue, John flashed into existence inside the skeleton of Rodney's half-completed airship. For a moment the basement was filled with white light, and for another moment he hung suspended in space, haloed by his own uncontainable energies, wings outstretched like they were feathers and bone and not a sheet of ionized particles he shed with every breath. "Hey," he said, walking towards them as if he were on solid concrete and not thin air. "What's the diagnosis, Doctor?"
"Broken arm, concussion, gonna need some stitches," Rodney said. "What about the Runner?"
"He wanted to follow up on some clues," John said casually. "We got all the bugs, but Kenmore escaped somehow, and…well, you know the Runner."
Rodney snorted. "At least he can't cover this one up. Tomorrow morning every newspaper in town will have him in the headlines. 'Dr. Michael Kenmore, Complete Lunatic, Tries to Conquer Earth With Army of Giant Roaches.'"
"That's a bit long for the Times," John said, but he was smirking, practically bouncing in place, and almost too bright to look at. He dropped to one knee next to the couch, though, and touched Teyla's face, just near the scratch. "Dammit, you're gonna need serious stitches," he muttered, and the halo faded a little.
"I am sure it is not as bad as it looks," Teyla said dryly.
"Yeah, but your face—"
"Archangel," she said, and curled her hand loosely around his to pull it away. "John. That is why we wear masks."
She managed a smile for him, and John even laughed a bit. And Rodney, for the first time, felt a small twinge of jealousy.
Rodney flicked on the light switch, intending to dispel the dank shadows with at least pure incandescence, even if he hadn't gotten around to putting the CFLs down here yet (his dirty little secret from Jeannie). The bulb gave a valiant flare before burning out. "Oh, hell, hang on a minute—"
He reached for the drawer with the flashlights and the spare bulbs, but the Runner pushed past him, stomping down the steps fearlessly. "Look, hold on a minute, I need to unlock the hangar door!" Rodney shouted, and hurried after him.
The Runner paused just beyond the foot of the stairs, looking around at the murky shapes revealed by the small, grimy windows and the skittering shaft of Rodney's flashlight. The Puddlejumper looked huge under its patchwork of tarps, and the white dropclothes he'd used to cover everything else—the computers, the storage lockers, the rocket bike he'd barely started on before the Kinsey Act—gave the place a haunted look. Only the couch and the desk were uncovered, and they were so dusty he probably should've done them, too.
"You kept all this?" the Runner asked, fingering one of Rodney's old scarves without taking it off its peg. The dust was so thick on it Rodney realized he couldn't tell where one stripe ended and the next began.
"Waste not, want not," he said, because it wasn't something Rodney himself understood all the time, and he knew the Runner never could. "Besides, how am I supposed to get rid of it? You think the American Kidney Foundation takes donations of used airships?"
The Runner dropped the scarf and folded his arms. Those biceps were still massive, but he was sporting a few new scars. They looked at one another for a moment, and Rodney was the one who blinked first.
As Rodney powered up the electronic locks on the hangar door (he'd rigged the system to lock itself down when the power was cut—thank you, Evil Overlord Manual—and leaving it unplugged saved him a fortune on his utilities) he asked, "So what do you intend to do next? Interrogate Justice's corpse? Find his killer and leave the severed head on the White House lawn?"
"Warn them," the Runner said.
"Warn who?"
"Teyla," he said, "Jackson. Carter. John."
Rodney snorted and punched in his password. "Teyla's got a husband and a kid in the suburbs. Jackson's worth more in stock options than God. Sam's got herself a cushy little job out at Area 51 with Archangel, who stopped being John a long time ago. You're not exactly the first entry in anybody's little black book right now. Besides, what do you intend to warn them about?"
"I think somebody's gunning for masks," the Runner said simply. "And they should be careful. So should you."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "God, it never ends with you, does it? The Kinsey Act was a conspiracy, the 9/11 attacks were staged by the CIA, now somebody's decided to start stalking retired adventurers—emphasis on retired, if you recall—a full eight years after we quit the business. Need I even remind you that Teyla and I didn't even come out in the press? Somebody would have to be nearly as deluded as you are to take up a grudge now."
"Maybe," the Runner said. "Maybe not."
He swept out the escape hatch before Rodney could say anything to that, and for a long time Rodney stared down the tunnel after the hulking shadow. There was more mildew down here, and standing water, and not all the access lights were working. He should fix that. Just, you know, for safety's sake. He watched until the Runner disappeared from sight, but only to make certain he didn't kill the power too soon and lock the poor stupid bastard into the tunnel. Even if that might be the best thing for him.
Sarah Jane rubbed up against his leg, startling him; she sniffed at the musty air of the tunnel, then sneezed dramatically and backed away. "Yeah," Rodney said. "Me too."
Author:
mad_maudlinRating: PG-13
Warnings: AU/mashup
Spoilers: none
Pairings: McShep, others implied
Summary: Eight years later, Rodney gets an unexpected visitor with some surprising news.
Disclaimer: SGA belongs to MGM. Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore. Dr. Who belongs to the BBC. The title at some point related to Bob Dylan. I think that covers it.
Notes: This may be the first in a longer series of pseudo-brainy mashup fics I dream of writing to explore the idea of fanfic as literary criticism, or, you know, not. You can't really play with the concept of timeline in a prose work they way you can in a graphic novel, but I figured my attempt at honoring Moore's awesometasticality made this fitting for the Backstory challenge. All hail MA and
lofro for getting me to actually read Watchmen in the first place.The Superhuman Crew
By Mad Maudlin
The lock was broken. Rodney had already insert the key before his mind registered the splintered wood of both door and frame, the scuff marks in a generic waffle pattern—like someone had kicked it in, kicked and kicked until the wood yielded, graceless and direct. He noted little things, like the sheer size of those footprints and the places where the tread had been worn to smoothness, with one part of his mind—the part that wasn't already gibbering in panic, panic and a seedy sort of anticipation, because Jesus H. Christ, someone was in his house, had broken into his house, what if they got his stereo or his laptop or his other laptop or his work laptop or his favorite laptop, oh, god, the basement, what if the little bastards had gotten into the basement—?
He pushed the door open and eased his way inside, forgoing the lights in case the invaders (oh, yeah, like this needed any extra melodrama) were still around. The living room was deserted and, by the street lights seeping in through the windows, apparently undisturbed—all computers and peripherals intact, at first glance, and nothing broken or even moved. There was a light coming from down the hall though, a stripe of shocking white from the CFLs Jeannie had made him install. He thought he saw it flicker, a shadow of movement. The angle meant the kitchen. Had somebody broken into his house to steal his coffee supply? Maybe lace it with citric acid? Or—no, oh, no, surely not the basement?
He reached behind the couch for the baseball bat he kept back there—that John had kept back there, back in the day, the (bad/good) old days. As if to remind him of just how old those days were, one of his hips popped, loud and painless, as he crouched down, and his attempt to steady himself on the couch ended up shoving it two or so inches to the right with a great honk of scraping floorboards. Rodney froze.
"You sneaking up on me, McKay?" John asked, suddenly right there—or maybe he'd been there all along, invisible, intangible, waiting for precisely the right moment to materialize and make Rodney scream like a girl.
"Like that's even possible," he snapped back, once he recognized his alleged assailant. "Also, would it kill you to let me know ahead of time when you're going to break into my house? I'd stock up on your favorite water."
"Budweiser is an American institution," John said with a little pout. "And you better not let people hear you say that in costume, or they're going to figure out that the smartest American hero is a dirty Canadian spy."
Rodney just snorted, and realized he was still holding the baseball bat. "Remind me why you wanted me to have this thing?" he asked, tossing it behind the couch among the dust bunnies. "And the question about announcing yourself still stands."
John sighed, and Rodney realized for a second that he really was holding himself together—no wings, no halo, just a tired-looking, skinny guy in an ugly flannel shirt and dark jeans. It had to hurt like hell. "I'm still an officer in the United States Air Force, Rodney."
"Yes, yes, and Bush's sop to the moral majority means the government has final say on where you put your penis, I get that," Rodney said. "But hasn't it occurred to you that you could, I don't know, strip the memories from people's minds, or teleport yourself through time, or maybe kill Jerry Falwell with your brain? I mean, baseball bats?"
"Which you still went for," John pointed out wryly.
Rodney cleared his throat, and busied himself hanging up his jacket. "Well, unlike some of us, I've managed to keep my secret identity secret all this time. It wouldn't exactly be conducive to my cover if I started whipping out sonic screwdrivers and laser blasters, would it?"
"Oh, of course," John said, without even trying to sound sincere. "Because all community-college physics teachers can argue string theory with Stephen Hawking and win."
"You're the one who instigated that," Rodney reminded him irately, but, well, that had been one of his finer hours, hadn't it? Too bad it had just been an email exchange, something to crow about among friends, and not carried live on CNN or something. "So," he said, once his jacket and briefcase were as carefully-arranged as they were going to get, "sex before food, or after?"
That actually made John laugh, laugh and relax, until the light started to seep out around his edges. "Who said I'm here for sex?" he asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. "Maybe I just heard you got the new Star Wars boxed set."
"Right, because you'd go AWOL for Carrie Fisher." Rodney never knew how to start these things, no matter how many times they'd done it; he settled for stepping close and putting his hands on John's hips, soaking in the terrific heat of him. Every time he seemed even warmer than the last.
"You got me," John said, low and husky, and ran his own hands up Rodney's back, over his shirt. The light grew brighter, the permanent halo that marked John out as America's savior and a walking quantum singularity. "Guess that's why they call you Doctor."
"Smartest man alive," Rodney said. He pressed his face into John's neck, feeling the little snaps of static there, and that unbelievable heat.
"Thought that was the Hierophant," John said, untucking Rodney's shirt.
"What, you think that little fetishist—?"
But then John was kissing him, and the light was growing brighter and brighter, and Rodney had no thoughts to spare for the competition; there was only John, and the light, and John, John, John.
He held his breath for a moment, fingers tightening on the dusty wood, but there was no further movement or noise from the kitchen. Maybe he'd just imagined the intruders from the beginning. Maybe they were already gone.
Right. Maybe people just kicked in his door for fun.
Rodney tried to ease his way down the hall, bat held high, half-wishing for a force disrupter instead of a Louisville Slugger. Any shred of surprise he may have been clinging to was disrupted when Sarah Jane came prancing out of the kitchen, tail held in the air, meowing a greeting. He tried to wave her off, but she just coiled around his legs, begging for her supper. There was still no movement from inside the kitchen, and perhaps that meant he really was alone, missing out on his own home invasion; Sarah Jane had gone quite grumpy in her old age, and generally hid under the bed hissing at strangers, not following them into the kitchen. Unless they'd left the fridge open, in which case she might've been feasting on leftover tuna casserole instead.
He eased the kitchen door open, slowly, as if that mattered with the cat yowling at his heels, and had one moment to register an enormous shape moving at him—
--knocking him face-first into a puddle of good-God-he-didn't-want-to-know. Sarah Jane yowled somewhere nearby, but Rodney was more concerned with a)getting out of the puddle before he caught something, and b) his assailant, who now appeared to be, uh, skeet shooting.
At least, that's what it reminded Rodney of, the way the razor-edged disks—circular saw blades, probably—came shooting out of the slot in the wall that he hadn't noticed until now. And the big man in the body armor was standing right where Rodney had been a second ago, right in the line of fire, deflecting each Frisbee of Death with a shot from some kind of enormous, probably illegal machine pistol. "What the hell are you doing?" Rodney demanded, once he'd gotten his feet and gotten Sarah Jane safely back to her perch on his shoulder.
"Saving you," the man said. His mask was one of those barely-there little dominos, the kind that shouldn't be as good as hiding your face as it was, though Rodney himself was much too paranoid to trust his identity to something you could buy in packs of twelve every Halloween. The gunman had a tangle of wild dreadlocks and biceps as big around as Rodney's thighs; he reloaded smoothly without missing a shot. "What are you doing?"
"Well, until you so gracefully interrupted us," Rodney said, checking that all his tools were still safely tucked away, "I was preparing to shut down Foursight's counterfeiting operation."
The gunman spared him a glance. "With a cat?"
"She's my lookout."
"Missed this."
"Yes, thank you, I'd gathered that information—" Rodney watched him reload again, pulling a clip off his belt; how many blades was this contraption loaded with? And here he'd thought these old steam tunnels would be an unguarded way in. "Uh, just out of curiosity, how many clips do you have left?"
"One." The gunman glanced at him. "You?"
"Me? Are you kidding?" Rodney started feeling through his coat for parts; just because he hadn't expected trouble didn't mean he hadn't planned on it. "I don't like guns."
"Gun's saving you now," the other said.
"Not for long," Rodney said, fitting the pieces smoothly together. Thank God he'd invested in some quality gloves; in the old pair he would've dropped something by now.
The gunman just grunted, and when he fired his last round he dropped down smoothly into a crouch, well below the level of the saw-blade contraption. He tried to drag Rodney back down, but by that time Rodney had the pulse pistol assembled; he dodged the great grasping hand, narrowly ducked another blade while the capacitor charged, and then blew out the blade-shooter's electrical system with a blast of electromagnetic static. There were, sadly, no dramatic showers of sparks or smoke; the last blade just got jammed in the slot.
He pretended to blow smoke off the pistol's dish anyway, and smirked at the burly newcomer, who was looking at him with suspicion. "What's you do?" he growled.
"Fried its electrical system," Rodney said. "Electromagnetic pulse pistol. Kills anything with a battery or a plug at fifty feet."
"Where'd you get it?"
Rodney eyed the newcomer's form-fitting leather and Kevlar; aside from a few things clipped to his Sam Browne belt and the, ah, large sword on his back, he was traveling light. "Some of us," he said, "have pockets. I'm the Doctor, by the way. And you are…?"
There was a moment of hesitation before the bigger man took Rodney's offered hand; he had a grip that could crack eggs. "The Runner."
"Hmm. Really. And exactly are you running from?"
Rodney was smart enough not to hang onto the bat in a fight he couldn't win, though he did kind of resent being held against the wall of his own kitchen, one meaty forearm across his throat, and a blast-gun that he had built himself pressed into his face. It was only for a moment, anyway, before the Runner recognized him. Then he spit out the half-a-hot-dog dangling from his mouth and stepped back. "McKay. Long time no see."
"Not long enough," Rodney said, probing his neck for any lasting damage. He had to teach in the morning, he couldn't go in looking like he'd tried to hang himself. "Don't you have other refrigerators to raid? And I'll have you know that lock was expensive. I may have to get a whole new door."
Sarah Jane had sniffed at the fallen piece of hot dog, but, seeing that Rodney wasn't going to open up the Fancy Feast, she followed the Runner back to the table, purring. She'd always been lousy judge of character.
The Runner sat down and pulled another cold hot dog out of the package; he'd also been into a can of baked beans, Rodney's beer stash, and the condiments. He put a generous squiggle of fluorescent yellow mustard on a hot dog and bit off half of it before announcing, "Colonel Justice is dead."
For a moment Rodney forgot how to breathe—
--because he hadn't designed his costume with tear gas in mind. He had to peel up part of his mask to get the rebreather on, and couldn't pull it down again completely; instead, he used his scarf to cover any bits of exposed skin that might conceivably give him away.
Outside the airship, the one John had always called Rodney's dinky little puddle-jumper, Colonel Justice was firing rubber bullets seeming at random into the fog left by the gas. "I see you, you little shit!" he bellowed into his megaphone, and Rodney heard a yelp of pain somewhere in the shadows. A single can of spray paint came rolling into the twin cones of the airship's main lights, joining the scattering of protest signs and the little blue flags the police union had been distributing.
In thirty seconds, they'd turned Times Square into a ghost town.
Justice got bored of shooting at shadows eventually, and made his way back to the airship. "Where's your buddies tonight, anyway?" he asked, voice tinny through his own rebreather. He wore body armor, like the Runner, but it was accented in gaudy stars and stripes, not solid black. Some of the stripes were a little scratched.
"Archangel is with Athena in Washington," Rodney said, nudging somebody's fallen purse with his foot. It occurred to him to start rounding up any missing personal effects, so they could be returned to the rightful owners…somehow. "Shadow's laying low for, uh, family reasons. The Runner's…somewhere in Brooklyn, probably."
"Probably?" Justice snorted, as he busied himself with putting a fresh clip into his rifle. "Thought the bunch of you were real good buddies and all."
"We mostly work alone these days," Rodney said defensively, and yeah, searching for personal effects was a good idea. At least they could drop them at the National Guard armory, if the police didn't break their picket lines. He found his flashlight and struck out into the drifting clouds of gas.
That didn't stop Colonel Justice from speechifying, though, and Rodney had forgotten the little ear microphones they were both wearing under their costumes. "Almost makes me agree with the cops, myself," he said, while Rodney kicked aside signs announcing WE WANT OUR POLICE and BADGES NOT MASKS. "Our kind, we work best alone. The gunslinger. The knight on his horse. Then it don't matter if you have an accident, or a day job, or if your backup just pussies out and starts doing voiceovers for P-B-fucking-S."
"The Hierophant made his choices," Rodney muttered, even if he'd been sharing more of less the same opinion of the newly-unmasked Daniel Jackson with John…come to think of it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd just sat down and talked to John. Archangel. Whatever he was now.
"That's what I'm saying," Justice said. "We all gotta make choices. Easier if you don't have to square that with anyone but God and yourself and maybe Congress."
"Maybe Congress?" The gas cloud was thinning, and Rodney spotted a woman's shoe half-covered by a crumpled banner. "What happened to Truth, Justice, and the America Way, Colonel?"
Silhouetted now in the airship's lights, Justice struck a pose with his rifle amidst the ruins of the protest. "You want the American way? You're looking at it."
Rodney reached the shoe and grabbed it. There was a foot inside. Throwing aside the folds of the banner, he realized sickly that there was a whole woman under there, not young, not pretty, wheezing in the drifting clouds of gas. Her tears and snot were mixed with blood, and there were splotches of blood on her clothes—she must've been trampled. "Oh, jesus—Colonel! Need some help over here!" He waved his light once, then fumbled through his pockets for a spare rebreather, even though it was probably too late.
Justice suddenly loomed over his shoulder, using the light on his rifle to trace the victim's twisted body. "What the hell—?"
"Help me get her into the airship," Rodney said, though there didn't seem to be any way to lift the woman without causing her more pain. She was barely conscious—a small blessing, at least. "We need to get her to the hospital."
"The mayor ordered us to hold the square," Justice said impassively.
"Which one, Tiananmen?" Rodney snapped. "She's dying. She's dying because of us."
Justice grumbled, but he helped Rodney fold over the banner into a sort of sling, and they moved the woman in one quick lurch. She cried out once, weakly, then really did pass out. Rodney fisted two corners of the banner, and started dragging her to the airship. "Aren't you helping?" he asked Justice.
"Mayor told us to hold the square," he repeated. "Besides, bitch was asking for it, joining this kind of crowd."
If Rodney hadn't been busy dragging the woman towards the airship, he would've stopped to gape. "What the—what kind of an attitude is that?"
Justice shrugged, painted shoulder pads exaggerating the gesture. "You normally take your perps to the hospital when you're done with them?"
"Mine don't usually need it!"
Rodney got as far as the ramp, on his own, before he had to stop for breath. He looked out over the square and wondered if there were other protestors, just like this woman, dying in the debris because of what they—he—had wrought. If he stopped to search, this one might die. If he left now, the rest certainly would. "We were supposed to protect them," he blurted between gasps, guilt merging into fear into irrational anger. "Who were we protecting them from?"
"Themselves," Justice answered, somewhere in the fog.
The banner-slash-travois came unfolded as Rodney dragged it up the ramp, and as he revved up the airship's engines he could read the entire question painted on it: WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?
"How—how do you know?" Rodney managed to stammer. "How? What happened?"
The Runner finished his hot dog. "Guy named Marshall Sumner went pavement diving last night. Police missed a hidden panel in his closet. Found the costume, some papers. He was Colonel Justice."
Rodney sat down, and when Sarah Jane climbed onto his knee he automatically started petting her. "Good," he finally said. "Good riddance. The man was…we worked the Kinsey Riots together. You know his record. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
The Runner wiped his face off. "You seen Ernest Littlefield lately?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"Littlefield and Sumner used to work together." As if to emphasize it, the Runner tossed a creased old black-and-white photograph on the table. "When Sumner was just Captain Justice and Littlefield was the Submariner."
Rodney studied the photograph: yes, there was old Justice, shockingly young and not yet carrying an Uzi. And Ernest, who'd once taught Rodney quantum physics, in that absurd old diving suit he used to run around in. Catherine Langeford, the original Pallas Athena, though her costume showed more thigh that Sam's ever had and her spear didn't shoot balls of plasma. Jacob Carter in his War Eagle costume. All the other masks that Rodney had grown up idolizing…
"Well, I can't fault your ambitions," Littlefield said. He was talking to Rodney but looking out his window, over the quadrangle, or maybe at the little gold-toned statue of his Submariner suit on the sill. Rodney really hated it when people didn't look at him when they were talking to him. "But you do know the life of a masked adventurer isn't all adventure."
Because Littlefield wasn't looking at him, Rodney rolled his eyes. "I've got contingency plans, of course," he said. "I've already developed a couple of ways of moving around under stealth, and I'm looking into refitting an old armored car for transportation, and my costume is Kevlar-lined and completely concealing." He pulled the sketches out of his binder and pushed them across the desk.
Littlefield looked at them, the frowned after a bit. "This is a bit…hm…unorthodox, isn't it?"
Rodney wanted to scream. "Of course it is," he said slowly. "I said I wanted to imitate you, not clone you, didn't I? And you said yourself in your book that the old-fashioned costumes had all sorts of problems and vulnerabilities and, by the way, looked pretty stupid. I mean, look that that." He gestured at the copy of the book on Littlefield's shelf, the one autographed by half the people on the cover. "Most of you guys were wearing your underwear on the outside of your pants, except for you, of course, who could've been walking around naked in that contraption."
Littlefield looked hard at Rodney through narrowed eyes, and then looked back at the drawing. "A trench coat and a fedora hardly seem like a costume at all," he said.
"Exactly," Rodney said. "Stealth, practicality, not looking stupid. I got the idea from a TV show."
"Isn't that a potential breach of copyright?" Ernest asked.
Rodney gave the question a little wave. "That would require somebody to have heard of it. It's like a million years old—I saw it when I was a kid in Canada and it was already in reruns—and it's British, so nobody on this side of the ocean is going to care. Except for me, of course, because it's absolutely perfect. And did you notice the mask? I designed it myself, it's completely concealing, the fabric's breathable and there's a less than ten percent reduction in visibility—or, I mean, there will be when I actually make the final version. But the most recent prototype is testing out great."
That, more than anything else Rodney had said, seemed to get Littlefield's attention. "You've obviously put a lot of thought into this."
Rodney resisted the urge to shout Yes, hello, genius! "Of course I have," Rodney said. "I mean, you said in your book—"
"I know what I said in my own book, Mr. McKay," Ernest said firmly. "So let me rephrase my original question. The job of a masked adventurer is about more than costumes and gadgets. We had—we have a duty to the community, when we take up this job. So why is it that you want the responsibility?"
Rodney licked his lips. "I—uh, that is—I mean, somebody has to do it, right?"
"We do have police," Ernest said, looking slightly amused.
"Oh, yes, them," Rodney sighed, "idiots who wouldn't know what to do with a computer if I programmed it to find Jimmy Hoffa for them. They're great for getting drunks off the streets and spousal abuse and, and truancy, but I'm talking about the real stuff, the important stuff, the…you know what I'm talking about, you did it all!"
"I know it," Littlefield said, passing Rodney back his sketches. "I'm just not sure that you do."
"I've seen this picture before," Rodney finally said.
The Runner nodded. "Littlefield used a copy of it in his book. The one where he accused Sumner of war crimes in Vietnam."
Rodney looked up sharply. "You're not suggesting that Ernest—come on, that's absurd, he's like a hundred years old."
The Runner just drained a beer and stood up. "Maybe. Maybe not."
A cold feeling settled in Rodney's stomach. "Tell me you're not working this," he said. "Because you know they haven't forgotten that little present you left the police commissioner after the Kinsey Act passed. You're going to get yourself sent to prison."
"Sumner didn't just jump out that window," the Runner said stonily. His dreadlocks were wilder than ever and did a better job hiding his face than his mask did—though that was no longer the plastic domino, but something long-jawed and jagged, like Edvard Munch by way of West Africa.
"Maybe it was the Russians," Rodney suggested. "Or the Iranians—they weren't too happy about how he took Baghdad. Or like eight hundred other foreign governments. He is the greatest American hero after all…was, I mean."
"Sumner was protected," the Runner pointed out. "Only person with higher security is Archangel."
"Archangel doesn't need security," Rodney said flatly.
The Runner suddenly stood up and wiped his mouth off. "Thanks for the food. Watch your back." He picked up his sword and headed for the door."
"Wait," Rodney blurted, not just because the Runner had eaten all his hot dogs (and okay, they'd been in the fridge for like a month already, but there was a principle of the thing). Surprisingly, the Runner paused. "You should…I mean, somebody might've seen you come in. Did I never teach you anything about picking locks?"
"No."
Rodney sighed, and fished into his pocket for his keys. "My point being, it's probably safer if you use the basement exit. It comes out under—"
"I remember."
"Oh, Yes. Um. Of course you do." Rodney nudged Sarah Jane off his lap and went to unlock the basement door. No matter how often he went down there to clean, there was always the distinct smell of—
—smoke and blood, overpowering the mildew smell that emanated from the dark corners. Rodney swallowed hard (he felt like puking every time John did this) and made it the last few steps to the saggy old couch under the stairs. Shadow tumbled out of his arms like a rag doll, not moving. Shit, shit, shit.
He snatched up the ginormous first-aid kit Jeannie made him put together and dragged it back to the couch. There was a booklet on top, and he fumbled with it for endless minutes before he realized it was upside-down. With a frustrated curse, he threw it against the wall. Shadow's pulse was steady, that was good, and she was breathing normally despite the amount of smoke she must've inhaled. He ran his hands gently along her limbs, and flinched when he felt something shift in her right forearm that shouldn't have been able to. "Okay," he said out loud, because thinking for an audience always helped him focus (even if, as in this case, the audience consisted of one unconscious masked adventurer and Sarah Jane, observing benignly from the top step). "Okay, it's not breaking the skin, so we should splint it, and, uh, ice? Is ice good for broken bones?"
He went and found the booklet again, and followed the instructions for splinting the break. Shadow's costume might've looked skimpy and ridiculous—Rodney may have in fact called it a 'glorified bondage suit' when they first met—but the hard leather turned out to be concealing Kevlar and a few clever little ceramic strike plates where Kenmore's Frankenbugs had managed to claw through it. No bullet wounds, thank God, and the gashes from those monsters didn't even seem to be that deep—maybe most of the blood wasn't hers.
Rodney tried to feel around under her hood for any head injuries, but there was leather and padding there, too, or possibly just a lot of hair. Half the hood was hanging loose anyway from a nasty slash across her face, and he'd need to bandage that for her anyway, so it shouldn't have been that hard to just pull the hood away and check her properly.
Except…there was a reason people like them wore the masks. Suck it up, McKay, he told himself. You just had your hands all over her anyway, what's it matter if you see her face? Except he hadn't, until now—not hers or the Runner's. John's face was copyright to the Department of Defense, so he didn't exactly need a mask, but Rodney hadn't taken his off in front of John until the first time they fucked. Somehow, it seemed that intimate.
Rodney was spared his moment of uncertainty when Shadow started to stir. "You're all right," he said immediately, in case she woke up disoriented and started lashing out. "You're safe. John teleported us back to my lab, you've got a broken arm and probably a concussion considering how long you were unconscious."
He repeated variations on this two or three times before Shadow's eyes opened and fully focused on his face. "Doctor," she said hoarsely.
"Right," he said. "I mean, of course you're right, it's just—how do you feel? Any pain anywhere besides the arm?"
"I feel that I am going to be sick," Shadow said, and Rodney got the wastebasket from under his desk just in time.
"So that's probably a definite concussion," Rodney said, "but I haven't—I mean, I wasn't—I didn't take off your hood. To check. It didn't seem…I wanted to ask your permission."
She wiped her mouth clumsily with her left hand, then looked up at him. "My permission?"
"Well, it's a bit…personal, isn't it?" Rodney asked, and desperately hoped she'd agree so he didn't feel like an even bigger moron, because that sensation was neither familiar nor comfortable.
"Of course," Shadow said, though she was also smiling a bit. "I cannot get it with one hand."
So Rodney pulled off his gloves, and carefully undid the laces that secured Shadow's hood, up one side of her face and then the other. When she peeled it back, there was a funny, sharp line of grime on her cheeks that marked out the contours of the cowl. She had high cheekbones and honey-golden hair that had mostly escaped from a French braid. No Pallas Athena, of course, but a beautiful woman. And without the mask of Shadow, strangely small.
Rodney gently felt around the back of her head, and almost immediately located the bloody contusion. "That's gonna need stitches," he said. "Here, I've got some gauze pads in the kit, and triple antibiotic—"
"Doctor," she said. "I have shown you mine. Will you not show me yours?"
She was smiling a little mischievously in spite of the tremendous pain she had to be in, and Rodney blanked for a second before his hands flew to his face. "Oh! You mean—well, um, sure, I guess. I mean, I don't see why not. I—"
"You do not have to," Shadow said. "If it makes you uncomfortable."
"Of course it doesn't make me uncomfortable. Just gimme a minute." He doused the pad in triple antibiotic and gave it to her to press on the wound. Then he hung up his hat and pocketed his glasses (the HUD projected on the lenses was proving to be more of a nuisance than a bonus anyway). He had to unwind about half his scarf to get at the bottom edge of his mask, so it made sense to just take the whole thing off and hang it next to his hat, and he had the curious thought that he was undressing in front of her, uncloaking, taking off the Doctor altogether.
The mask clung uncomfortably to his sweaty face for a moment, and then it was off, and tucked away in his pocket. He looked at Shadow and smiled weakly, wondering what she was seeing—plain face, crooked mouth, pointy chin, prematurely receding hairline? "Hello," she finally said. "My name is Teyla."
"Huh? Oh. I mean, hi." He waved, weakly. "Rodney McKay."
"Pleased to meet you." Shadow—Teyla—looked around the lab. "This is where you work?"
"In my spare time." He'd almost forgotten that only John had been down here before. "Between, you know, the day job and the fighting crime and the inventing new physics."
"Why did Archangel send us here?"
Rodney found a bottle of water in the mini-fridge and offered it to her, along with a bottle of Tylenol, of which she took several. "Probably because it's connected to my house. We can get you cleaned up and changed, and then take you to the hospital from the front. Or I know a guy, we did some business together a few years back, he usually patches up Sarah Jane and I so I could give him a call if you don't want to explain this in an emergency room."
Teyla settled her head back on the couch cushions, still holding the gauze pad in place. "For the moment I wish to rest. I am very dizzy."
"Well, don't go to sleep," Rodney said immediately. "That's bad, very bad. You're not seeing double, are you?"
"No," she said. "This is not my first concussion, Rodney."
"Right. Of course." There was enough room on the end of the couch for him to sit, even with Teyla stretched out fully. She never seemed so short when she was masked and beating mutant insects with sticks. Sarah Jane came to his lap, purring, but quickly started investigating the smell of Teyla's boots. "Just, whenever you're ready, we can get changed—or finish changing—and go."
"I would like to wait for the others," Teyla said. "I assume they will follow us—"
On cue, John flashed into existence inside the skeleton of Rodney's half-completed airship. For a moment the basement was filled with white light, and for another moment he hung suspended in space, haloed by his own uncontainable energies, wings outstretched like they were feathers and bone and not a sheet of ionized particles he shed with every breath. "Hey," he said, walking towards them as if he were on solid concrete and not thin air. "What's the diagnosis, Doctor?"
"Broken arm, concussion, gonna need some stitches," Rodney said. "What about the Runner?"
"He wanted to follow up on some clues," John said casually. "We got all the bugs, but Kenmore escaped somehow, and…well, you know the Runner."
Rodney snorted. "At least he can't cover this one up. Tomorrow morning every newspaper in town will have him in the headlines. 'Dr. Michael Kenmore, Complete Lunatic, Tries to Conquer Earth With Army of Giant Roaches.'"
"That's a bit long for the Times," John said, but he was smirking, practically bouncing in place, and almost too bright to look at. He dropped to one knee next to the couch, though, and touched Teyla's face, just near the scratch. "Dammit, you're gonna need serious stitches," he muttered, and the halo faded a little.
"I am sure it is not as bad as it looks," Teyla said dryly.
"Yeah, but your face—"
"Archangel," she said, and curled her hand loosely around his to pull it away. "John. That is why we wear masks."
She managed a smile for him, and John even laughed a bit. And Rodney, for the first time, felt a small twinge of jealousy.
Rodney flicked on the light switch, intending to dispel the dank shadows with at least pure incandescence, even if he hadn't gotten around to putting the CFLs down here yet (his dirty little secret from Jeannie). The bulb gave a valiant flare before burning out. "Oh, hell, hang on a minute—"
He reached for the drawer with the flashlights and the spare bulbs, but the Runner pushed past him, stomping down the steps fearlessly. "Look, hold on a minute, I need to unlock the hangar door!" Rodney shouted, and hurried after him.
The Runner paused just beyond the foot of the stairs, looking around at the murky shapes revealed by the small, grimy windows and the skittering shaft of Rodney's flashlight. The Puddlejumper looked huge under its patchwork of tarps, and the white dropclothes he'd used to cover everything else—the computers, the storage lockers, the rocket bike he'd barely started on before the Kinsey Act—gave the place a haunted look. Only the couch and the desk were uncovered, and they were so dusty he probably should've done them, too.
"You kept all this?" the Runner asked, fingering one of Rodney's old scarves without taking it off its peg. The dust was so thick on it Rodney realized he couldn't tell where one stripe ended and the next began.
"Waste not, want not," he said, because it wasn't something Rodney himself understood all the time, and he knew the Runner never could. "Besides, how am I supposed to get rid of it? You think the American Kidney Foundation takes donations of used airships?"
The Runner dropped the scarf and folded his arms. Those biceps were still massive, but he was sporting a few new scars. They looked at one another for a moment, and Rodney was the one who blinked first.
As Rodney powered up the electronic locks on the hangar door (he'd rigged the system to lock itself down when the power was cut—thank you, Evil Overlord Manual—and leaving it unplugged saved him a fortune on his utilities) he asked, "So what do you intend to do next? Interrogate Justice's corpse? Find his killer and leave the severed head on the White House lawn?"
"Warn them," the Runner said.
"Warn who?"
"Teyla," he said, "Jackson. Carter. John."
Rodney snorted and punched in his password. "Teyla's got a husband and a kid in the suburbs. Jackson's worth more in stock options than God. Sam's got herself a cushy little job out at Area 51 with Archangel, who stopped being John a long time ago. You're not exactly the first entry in anybody's little black book right now. Besides, what do you intend to warn them about?"
"I think somebody's gunning for masks," the Runner said simply. "And they should be careful. So should you."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "God, it never ends with you, does it? The Kinsey Act was a conspiracy, the 9/11 attacks were staged by the CIA, now somebody's decided to start stalking retired adventurers—emphasis on retired, if you recall—a full eight years after we quit the business. Need I even remind you that Teyla and I didn't even come out in the press? Somebody would have to be nearly as deluded as you are to take up a grudge now."
"Maybe," the Runner said. "Maybe not."
He swept out the escape hatch before Rodney could say anything to that, and for a long time Rodney stared down the tunnel after the hulking shadow. There was more mildew down here, and standing water, and not all the access lights were working. He should fix that. Just, you know, for safety's sake. He watched until the Runner disappeared from sight, but only to make certain he didn't kill the power too soon and lock the poor stupid bastard into the tunnel. Even if that might be the best thing for him.
Sarah Jane rubbed up against his leg, startling him; she sniffed at the musty air of the tunnel, then sneezed dramatically and backed away. "Yeah," Rodney said. "Me too."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 04:19 pm (UTC)The Doctor! Sarah Jane! Archangel!! The Hierophant! (where's Jack O'Neill? Is he in here somewhere and I didn't notice?) ooo man, I want so, so much more.
This is the only part I don't understand:
You can't really play with the concept of timeline in a prose work they way you can in a graphic novel
-- because it seems to me that you can, and we do. Or am I misunderstanding?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 05:25 pm (UTC)What I meant by "play with the concept of timeline" is really the gorgeous, seamless transitions used in Watchmen, particularly the funeral flashbacks that this fic plays off of (even if the plot is taken from the preceding issue). That's something that a more visual medium like comics or cinema can pull off way more easily than prose, if only by pure virtue of how the brain processes images vs. text. But I tried, and apparently I did something right. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 05:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 05:56 pm (UTC)And of course Rodney would be the Doctor -- who email-battled Hawking! So many lovely touches including the intimacy of the masks and with Archangel, who stopped being John a long time ago
Adored this!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 04:12 am (UTC)You win :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 01:59 pm (UTC)someone was in his house, had broken into his house, what if they got his stereo or his laptop or his other laptop or his work laptop or his favorite laptop
This line is just. so. Rodney. Excellent work.
(Watchmen's fantastic, I cannot wait for the movie.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 09:02 pm (UTC)Oh and yay Rodney! For
notcopying Doctor Who.(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 04:34 pm (UTC)Rodney = Dan
John = Jon
Ronon = Rorschach
Daniel = Ozymandias
Sumner = The Comedian
Ernest = Hollis
Beyond that, yes, the mapping is a little squishier. And I know there's no canon precedent for the McShep here, especially since Nancy = Janey is an obvious match, but I liked the idea so much I couldn't bear to drop it. Thanks for reading!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-01 06:38 am (UTC)Oh, I could go on for ages about the writing here, too, and the integration of the flashbacks (which you're right about; it isn't quite like it is in a comic or a film, b/c we don't actually have visuals, but you did it perfectly for the medium).
I feel like this is one of the great triumphs of the internet. Here, have a cookie. *offers*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-01 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 03:51 am (UTC)(Though to be clear: this works really well as a stand-alone short story. I mean, I can fill in the blanks myself and it's a perfect little vignette.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 04:58 pm (UTC)