zeegoeshere

Where Is Thy Victory
Summary: The Wraith win. R
Disclaimer: Not mine. am poor. don't sue.
Notes: Thanks to Livia for audiencing, and the title.





They have left John and Rodney for last.

They took Elizabeth on the first day, making everyone else watch as the five Wraith leaders fed upon her in turns, taking bits at a time. She never screamed; she made the most horrible, shuddery gasping sounds Rodney has ever heard, but she never screamed.

He knows he won’t be that brave, when it finally happens. He doubts John will, either.

After they had made their point with Elizabeth, they went through the Marines and the Athosians. They knew exactly what that would do to John and Teyla, making them watch as their people died one by one.

They didn’t start in on the scientists right away—maybe they looked too scrawny—but when they did, it was worse than anything else. The scientists had all been so, so brave just to come to Atlantis, but they weren’t trained for it, they never had to wear uniforms or think about the reality of capture in enemy hands. They screamed and begged and pleaded, and some of them tried to negotiate, offer up information on Earth in exchange for their own lives. But after Kavanaugh spilled every detail about the SGC that the Wraith wanted to know, and they killed him slowly despite it, the attempts at negotiation stopped.

Time stopped, when you were cramped into a not-big-enough cell with an entire city of people, like so much livestock. Teyla took her own life at the end of the second week, and Rodney stopped counting the days after that.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t resorted to suicide himself; he knows that anything he could come up with would be preferable to dying by the Wraith. He’s also seen the way they punished the others who attempted suicide after Teyla, and he isn’t sure which option is the worst yet.

He knows that John is staying alive just to spite them. They take him out every day, interrogate him, beat him, torture him; they haven’t fed upon him yet, probably because they know that the more John anticipates it, the worse it will be. They’re going to take the utmost pleasure in killing him, as vengeance for all the trouble he’s caused him; they might even wait until after they win the war against Earth. It would probably be the equivalent of opening a well-aged and treasured bottle of wine, to them.

Rodney knows he can’t trust the information their guards give them about the war (Your people are all dead, We have laid waste to your planet, Your bravest leaders beg us for their lives—they need new material), but occasionally he manages to snatch tidbits of actual info.

Earth is still fighting. Earth is still losing. The Asgard have mostly abandoned them, except for a loyal few. The Goa’uld and the Wraith are squabbling. (Rodney keeps hoping that they’ll wipe each other out.) Jack O’Neill and SG-1 have yet to save them, which is really all that matters.


He has no idea why they haven’t killed him yet. Every morning, since they lost the last battle and his city was destroyed and they were all taken, guards come in, looking at him like he’s a rare steak, and it always seem like a flip of a coin that leads them to grab someone else for dinner. He keeps waiting for the coin to go the other way, but it never does, until the only people left are himself and John, sharing a cell that originally held an entire city.

Of course, the Wraith don’t need to feed off them, now. They get new POWs from Earth almost daily.

He and John don’t talk much. They take John away to break him some more in the morning (what passes for morning), and after a few hours they take him back, and Rodney holds him until tears stop streaming down his face.

They tell each other stories, sometimes. To remind each other that there was life outside this ship, at one point in time.

“Do you remember the first time you sat in an Ancient chair? You had the funniest facial expression I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face.”

“Do *you* remember your face when I let you know that I’d gotten a higher score than you on the Mensa test?”

“Do you remember coffee?”

“Do you remember women?”

Rodney’s worst nightmare is that they’ll take John first. They’ll take John, and they won’t bring him back, and he knows he’ll go insane in a matter of hours—minutes—if that happens. He’ll break, he’ll weep, he’ll beg them to kill him, he’ll give them any information on Earth they don’t already have. The only thing that’s keeping him from doing that *now* is that he knows John needs him as much as he needs John.

Of course, Rodney knows his nightmare won’t actually happen. They’re saving John for last.

One day, a miracle happens. One of the last Asgard ships Earth has manages to take them out.

They both realize what’s happening when they feel something slam into the ship, hear the Wraith shriek and alarms start going off. John is squeezing Rodney’s hand so tight that he can feel his bones shrieking, and they’re both staring at each other in wonder.

More Wraith yelling, more smoke and the ship shakes some more. Then they hear something fizzle, and they can almost *feel* the shield die. They’re both holding their breath, staring at each other.

It seems too much to hope, that they might die like this, so easily and painlessly. With something almost like honor.

The explosion happens in slow motion: they feel the hit, they hear the screams of dying Wraith and human prisoners, and then there’s nothing but orange and heat and flames surrounding them, and the last thing Rodney McKay feels is John’s grip, crushing the bones in his hand.