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sga_flashficTitle: Destiny
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
badwolf36
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,436
Characters: John, Todd, Rodney
Spoilers: Vegas---Set in the Vegas universe
Summary: “Come inside. I’ll show you your destiny, John Sheppard.”
Prompt: From ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elementalv: "My secret dirty-wrong-bad pairing of choice is John/Todd. The chemistry between them is undeniable. Is it so strange that I wish I could see a post-canon treatment of their obsession with love for each other?"
(This may not have been exactly what you had in mind, but I hope it suits.)
It’s like a lingering echo in his mind, the words leaving a slippery, greasy feeling as he stares up at the unforgiving desert sky. The smell of smoke steals what breath he has left.
“Dry as a desert outside. No place to go.”
He wonders whether the air strike really stopped the alien, the Wraith. But then the blood starts bubbling from his lips and he stops caring.
“Keep dreaming. There must be some other reason for your existence.”
That guy, McKay, he had said that he’d met another version of him. One who was the leader of a team in another galaxy. One who was brave and honorable. One who fought aliens and saved the world.
He wondered…
And then distantly, he heard choppers before he heard no more.
***************************
“Oh thank god, you’re awake.”
John blinked his eyes against the harsh track lighting above him. Hadn’t he been staring up at the Vegas sky just a moment ago?
“I was really getting worried there. I mean, the other McKay told me that his Sheppard had a hero complex, but I didn’t really believe it because I tracked down your file and you seemed nothing like that guy, but I guess appearances really can be deceiving and some things are universal constants, and how could you do something so stupid?”
John risked turning his head to find the source of the chewing out he was receiving and saw a rather disheveled McKay, his carefully smoothed-hair standing up in little tufts from where he’d obviously been scrubbing his hands through it. And he was glaring at John like he expected an answer.
“Sorry?” he said dryly, before coughing. McKay flailed for a moment before grabbing a cup of water off a bedside table and carefully fitting the straw into John’s mouth.
“Dry as a desert.”
John managed a few careful sips before McKay drew the cup away.
“Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it, but we’ll talk about that later. You really saved our asses out there with your stupid heroics.”
“You’re welcome?” John tried, unsettled by how the man who had seemed so solid and confident when he had first met him seemed to be unraveling at the edges.
McKay snorted. “Good enough. Look, we’re going to take care of you. And I mean really take care of you, not just patch you up and dump you back in that crappy hotel of yours. You’re going to have a different life, if you really want it.”
And for once, John actually believed the promise.
“I know the future.”
***********************************
He waved the security guard aside, tapping in his personal security code to enter the room and then shutting it behind himself. His security clearance was higher than the President’s now.
McKay hadn’t lied. Suddenly, John’s records weren’t only sealed; they were purged completely. His debts were gone. A Marine passing by him in the hallway one day had said he’d had a little visit with Mikey and that John didn’t have to worry about it anymore. His car had been a wash, but one day after he started debriefing on the details of his new life; there was an exact duplicate sitting in the parking space next to McKay…Rodney’s silver Prius.
Rodney was an odd duck, a complete genius with the suave of a private detective who had a hidden streak of insecurity a mile wide. He had confided to John early on in their friendship that he still wore his wedding band because he didn’t want anyone to know his wife had left him for a third-rate scientist named Kavanaugh.
And it was a friendship. John didn’t know quite how he and Rodney had fallen into such an easy camaraderie, but they’d bonded over everything from music (Rodney told him he had once learned guitar just so he could wear all black and walk around with it; John told him about the fact that his Johnny Cash poster was the only thing he’d taken from his office. A new poster hung over his hospital bed for the rest of his recovery) to sports (which Rodney mocked endlessly, but always seemed to be able to call the winner in any given game; John considered calling Mikey again, but Rodney just gave him a calculating look and he made a resolution to himself to never return to that part of his life.)
Then he’d sat in the chair and McKay’s promise of a new life became an immediate reality. Suddenly, he was a civilian contractor who would be returning with McKay’s team to the Lost City of Atlantis- and hadn’t that been a shock on par with learning aliens were real and liked to eat people- and in the meantime he would be acting as the ATA-gene consultant in the labs (“You are glorified light switch,” the funny Czech scientist whose name John could never remember had said as he’d patted him on the shoulder and handed him yet another device.)
But this, right here, was what had really been lingering in the back of his mind for weeks. A niggling feeling that left him feeling cold and grasping at his chest whenever it floated over him.
“So,” John said, nervously fidgeting with the cuffs of the gray and blue uniform jacket he had been fitted with. The BDUs were familiar, but strange after so long wearing blue jeans. “Do you Wraith have names?”
The Wraith looked up from its pacing and leered at him, jagged teeth catching John’s eye for far too long.
“Wraith are never-ending,” he said. “Think.”
John stepped closer to the glass containment cell. “How about Todd? Sounds like a good name for you.”
The Wraith had resumed its pacing, head swinging to and fro as it roamed, but at the name, its head snapped up.
“Yes, destiny has a way of finding its way, even in the dry and the dark. Do you know? Wait. Think. Hope.”
“McKay said you could get in people’s heads. But I think it’s something more with me. Am I right?” John stepped even closer to the glass; grateful that’d he had the foresight to shut the door so that the guard couldn’t see what he was doing. There was still the thick cell walls between them, but he had a feeling this wasn’t standard procedure for captured aliens.
“Come inside,” the newly christened “Todd” invited, swinging his head to the side, but there was no door. No reason for there to be, John realized. It wasn’t like they were going to feed him.
“Afraid I can’t do that. But you can still talk to me. Tell me what it is you know.”
John’s nose was practically pressed to the glass now. He didn’t know why or how it was that this…this thing had gotten so far under his skin, but there he was and John had to know. He just had to. He just wasn’t sure what it was he was looking for.
“I know your destiny John Sheppard.” Todd smiled, pressing his hand against the glass.
John recoiled at seeing the sucker in his palm. He’d seen what that thing could do; seen the corpses it left behind. Todd’s grin just stretched further.
“Play out the story, over and over, in a thousand combinations. No, a million. No, trillions! And destiny will always find the one who hungers and the one who needs. Fight! Think. Work and hope. Together, you see.”
Stepping away, John took a shaky breath. McKay was right. Todd was delirious from hunger and he was wasting his time here. But…but these poems of his seemed a bit more pointed than his previous rants about hunger and the dryness of the desert. Maybe…
“What’s our story? Come on Todd, tell me. What’s our story?”
John’s life had been in a stall that he couldn’t, and maybe didn’t want to pull out of. McKay had been right, about everything. It was a pathetic existence and he knew it, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of making some difference in the world, even if it had meant the sacrifice of his worthless life. But apparently his life wasn’t worthless. He’d been saved and given a purpose, which was almost greater than the gift of life had been.
John Sheppard believed in destiny. And if this was his, he needed to know everything about it.
He pressed his hand unflinchingly against the Wraith’s, lining up their fingers against the glass. “Tell me about destiny Todd. Tell me about our destiny.”
And Todd just smiled.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 04:15 am (UTC)Brilliant.
Well done. *hands over an award* "You got it."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:05 am (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the review!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 04:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 04:09 pm (UTC)He's so cute when he's Zen. *hugs Todd* And insane. *hugs Todd again* I think sandrine was right when she invented the term "eye-fuckery" to describe these two together :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 07:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 05:08 pm (UTC)On the other hand, He had confided to John early on in their friendship that he still wore his wedding band because he didn’t want anyone to know his wife had left him for a third-rate scientist named Kavanaugh.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha.....
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-22 02:17 am (UTC)Was totally awesome! But you knew that, didn't you? *giggles* Loved it!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-23 06:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-10-15 01:52 am (UTC)