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stringertheory) wrote2024-02-11 03:19 pm
stringertheory) wrote2024-02-11 03:19 pm
If At First You Don’t Succeed: Chapter 8
Title: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 3908
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death; TW: suicide
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
Ronon was no longer sure whether it was a blessing or a curse that the loop wouldn’t let him stay dead.
A fear had been growing in a corner of his mind, quiet and creeping like a vine, a whisper that they were never going to be free. He was going to be trapped in this facility, on this planet, watching his friends die over and over again for the rest of eternity. They were going to keep dying and he was going to keep following them and eventually it would break him. And then there would be nobody left who knew what was happening, nobody who could even try to save them.
He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on, and he didn’t want to find out.
The stinging ache of being eaten alive lingered in his skin and his whole body shuddered, as if trying to shake off the animals that no longer clung to him, all teeth and claws. His hands twitched but his voice was steady as he looked at the others with eyes that saw blood and burns and the hollows left by life sucked away and he lied.
He lied to their faces and said he remembered seeing something back in the bathroom that, now that he thought about it, probably needed further investigation.
He shrugged believably when Sheppard asked what he’d seen and mumbled something about a possible hidden door. When McKay peppered him with questions, he put on a suitably irritated expression and responded that he didn’t know anything for sure, and that’s why they had to go back. He met Teyla’s slightly skeptical gaze without a flinch, and only hated himself a little when she believed him.
As he’d anticipated, as he’d hoped, McKay grabbed on to the breadcrumb with both hands, steaming back out into the hallway with an air of eager, hopeful anticipation, everything else forgotten. Sheppard stayed at his heels with Teyla not far behind, leaving Ronon to follow last. Surreptitiously, he picked up a metal rod lying near the door before he exited the room. Then he hurried to join the others as they neared the bathroom, knowing he would have only a few minutes at most before even a cursory study of the room revealed his deception.
The truth was that he had noticed something interesting about the bathroom when they’d first peeked into it what felt like lifetimes ago. And while it hadn’t been a secret doorway, it had been door related.
McKay had been dismayed by the bathroom’s small size and what that might have said about the size of the facility it serviced, but Ronon was pretty sure that the room hadn’t originally been a bathroom at all. Instead of having a sliding door with a control panel, or the rarer swinging door with a knob, the bathroom had a hatch.
It opened into the bathroom, and had been left open when the base was abandoned. Ronon kept the door in the edge of his vision as the others moved into the room. He knew that he had to time his movements carefully to make sure none of them guessed his intentions at the last minute, something that was made all the harder by the room’s small size.
So when the others seemed content to linger just inside the doorway, he offered one more lie to get them moving. Motioning them on, he said he was pretty sure he’d seen the edge of a control panel on the far wall behind the cubicles. McKay immediately headed in that direction and disappeared behind the last partition, the others pulled along by his motion.
And as soon as Teyla had cleared the door’s path, Ronon made his move.
The door clanked sharply against its frame as he heaved it shut, the wheel on its face turning smoothly beneath his hands despite millennia of disuse. The rhythmic clunking of the gears sealing the door shut echoed down the hallway like the sound of running footsteps, and Ronon fought the urge to look over his shoulder. Once the wheel jammed against the end of its track, the impact jarring through his arms, he wedged the metal bar he’d brought with him through the spokes to lock it in place. Then he checked for any other locking mechanisms—the more the better, if he wanted to keep McKay secured—but didn’t find any.
From the other side of the door he could hear muffled thumping, slightly metallic in nature, and the faintest roar of shouts. There were no words, barely the semblance of pitch, but it let Ronon know that the others were alive. Raising one fist, he pounded on the door three times in a slow, steady progression. There was a pause in the noise coming from inside, then a flurry of knocks repeating his own.
He could picture them in his mind: McKay a bit frantic, a bit angry; Sheppard worried but leaning on annoyance instead; Teyla calm but concerned. They were confused now, but they’d understand later.
He had to figure out how to get them home, and he couldn’t risk their lives in the process. Not again. Not anymore.
Turning his back on the continuing sounds of frustration ringing through the metal, he looked up and down the hall. Deciding the left side of the facility had done enough damage—and provided no answers—he headed over to the right side.
The first few hallways he could recall well enough from his previous, more harried trips through this part of the facility. They and the rooms they contained had been devoid of danger or aid, so he carried on past them without pause. The remaining few hallways that made up what he thought might have been living quarters were equally empty, and he found himself at a major intersection.
A small pile of rubbish near one corner looked familiar, though it took him a few minutes to figure out why. Then he remembered—just down the hallway to his left, and then down another short one to the right, was where the Wraith had killed him. The first time.
He was surprised that he’d gotten to this point in the facility so quickly. When he’d been running on blind desperation, the facility had seemed much larger, more labyrinthine. Based on that, he’d anticipated a long and tedious search, with innumerable rooms set along endless, meandering corridors. But instead, it looked like answers might be closer than he’d expected.
The warm pinprick of hope was uncomfortable but welcome, and he turned to his right, into the unexplored corridor there.
It was disappointingly empty of anything useful, though it did house a large suite of bathroom facilities that were better suited to servicing the number of people Ronon calculated the facility could house than the tiny bathroom where he had left the rest of the team would have been on its own.
A quick survey of the corridor that led straight ahead from the intersection was equally disappointing. It only held several former labs of varying sizes, all long since stripped of any equipment or tools.
Back at the intersection, Ronon finally took the left corridor, retracing the path McKay’s screams had led him down. When he reached the first hallway that appeared on his right, he hesitated for a second before entering it. He half expected to see the Wraith standing there waiting for him when he turned the corner, but the hallway was full of nothing but shadows and dust.
Ronon did find the Wraith at its end, though.
There were a few small rooms on either side of the hall—storage rooms, he thought—but the doors at its end led into a large, airy control room with several stations that overlooked individual isolation rooms. A few of the rooms still had exam tables in them, open straps dangling over their edges, but most were completely empty.
Ronon found himself drawn to the station on the far right. Below it, in the isolation room it controlled, were two stasis pods, neatly placed side by side against the wall farthest from the control room. One pod was vacant, its window dark. But the other was lit, and despite the dust that had settled over it there was no mistaking the face behind the glass. It was a face Ronon would never forget, having stared into it twice while he died.
Part of him wanted to find a way down into the room so that he could take the Wraith out, wanted it so desperately that he could feel his fingernails cutting into his palms as his hands clenched into fists. But a larger part—or at least a stronger part—held back.
Ronon contemplated destroying the control station that overlooked the room, but didn’t want to risk shorting out the controls and freeing the Wraith anyway. He wasn’t sure exactly how to get to the isolation level yet, and if the Wraith got away before he got to it, anything might happen.
Anyone might die.
He found himself backing toward the control room door, somehow having decided what to do without realizing he’d decided it. He backed all the way into the hall, let the door shut again, and then destroyed its control panel as thoroughly as possible.
Then he turned and walked away without looking back.
He returned to the main hallway and continued down it, next examining the branch that held the room where Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay had been mysteriously cut apart while he’d watched helplessly from behind glass. When the two doors he hadn’t been behind still refused to open, he simply left. There was nothing in the two rooms he knew how to access that could help them, and he doubted getting into the other two rooms would be worth the effort, or the risk.
Surprisingly, there were no other rooms on the main hallway. Not much farther along, it ended with a left hand turn that found him back in another familiar corridor, standing just outside the electricity room. He’d found his way back to the other side of the facility.
More reflexively than spitefully, Ronon destroyed the room’s door controls again, just as he’d done before. Then he headed to the final part of the facility he hadn’t checked: the staircase that led down.
He didn’t have high hopes for what he might find there, so he wasn’t disappointed. Mostly it was a storage level—or at least it had been. There were even labels on some of the doors stating as much; he’d learned enough Lantean to pick out the faded script.
As he walked the length of the level, he mentally tracked what part of the facility he was under, and knew what was waiting for him at the end.
The last several doors on the level corresponded to the isolation rooms he’d viewed from the observation room above. Again showing uncharacteristic restraint, he didn’t open the last one when he reached it. He didn’t go in, didn’t wake the Wraith from its slumber, didn’t battle it to one of their deaths. Instead he carefully took apart the door control panel, destroying its components in a way that he knew would ensure it couldn’t be opened and avoiding damage he knew could cause it to open and lock in that position.
Then, with the facility mapped, all dangers identified, and no device or other cause of the loop found, he headed back for his team. He was no closer to answers, but at least he had fewer questions.
The main one remaining was what was causing the loop. Followed closely by how to stop it. And he needed the others to figure that out.
His mind was running through what he’d found—and what he hadn’t—when he was brought back to the present by a splash.
Ronon squinted down at the puddle he’d come to a stop in, confused and disoriented.
There was water in the hallway. Where there hadn’t been water before.
He was still a couple of meters away from the bathroom, but it was obvious that it was the source of the water. The puddle beneath his feet led directly to its door, and he could just make out the trickle leaking from the door’s bottom edge, the flow hugging the angles of the wall as it streamed down.
For a long moment, he just stared at the sealed door in blank incomprehension, his mind refusing to put together the pieces in a hopeless attempt at self preservation. But soon enough the reality of what he was seeing broke through the stupor, and he set off at a sprint.
It felt like his hands were two sizes too big as he struggled to free the metal bar that he’d meant to be a protective measure from the wheel. This close to the door, he could hear the faint hissing of water being forced through tiny cracks in its seal, and his anxiety surged in response, matching the tension in perfect pitch. With every nerve ending alight, the clang of the bar hitting the floor jolted through his body like physical pain.
As his pulse throbbed in his throat like a wounded bird, he grabbed the wheel and spun it backwards as quickly as he could, hand over hand. The clacking of the gears matched the frantic pace of his heartbeat, the two keeping time with the single word staccato of his thoughts.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
Just when he’d begun to believe that he wouldn’t find the end of the track, that the wheel would just keep turning forever while the hissing drove him mad, it slammed to a stop.
Panting, Ronon pushed. The door didn’t budge.
He gave the wheel a quick check, to make sure he’d actually opened it all the way. He had, but while the leak at the bottom looked like it had grown in size, he couldn’t tell whether the door itself had moved at all. Adjusting so that he was pressing against an area closer to where it opened—he knew he only needed to create a small gap to get it opened all the way—he tried again.
He gritted his teeth against the memories and focused on pushing. Here he was again, battling death with another door. Only this time he was on the safe side. Only this time he’d locked his friends on the dangerous one.
Muscles quivering, dreading discovering what was on the other side while also knowing what it would be, he pushed until it felt like his arms were going to be ripped from their sockets. The only signs that he was making any progress at all were the few jets of water that erupted around the edges of the door, indications of pressure being released. One of them sprayed a mist across his face that turned to rainbow colors in the hallway lights, and he blinked against the droplets as he pushed with everything he had, and then asked his body for more.
He was giving out, could feel himself waning, and he let out a cry of desperation and frustration as he gave one last surge. And something finally gave.
The door was sucked violently inwards, and Ronon’s legs were knocked out from under him by the wave of water that rushed around it and into the hall. The current of the flow was strong enough that it actually carried him away from the bathroom, but he scrambled back to his feet as soon as he could find them and sloshed back to the door.
It had been pushed partially closed again by the water’s escape. A steady stream was still pouring from the room, the flow now down to about knee height and dropping.
When Ronon attempted to push the door further open, it only moved another inch or two before hitting something. He couldn’t see what the impediment was—it was behind the door, and he couldn’t yet fit his head through the gap between the door and the frame. But whatever the blockage was, it offered less resistance than the water had, so with a bit more effort from his trembling limbs he was able to shove the door far enough open that he could slip inside.
As he did, his attention was drawn to a fist-sized hole in the wall about six inches to the side of the door frame. A pipe within the wall—broken in a way that looked suspiciously like gunfire damage—was gurgling noisily, water burbling down its sides to disappear inside the wall.
It was then that Ronon knew what had happened.
His blood felt thick and sluggish in his veins as he turned to look into the room. The cubicle wall caught him as the world titled sideways.
There, behind the door, were Teyla, Sheppard, and McKay.
They were on top of one another, having been piled together against the door by the force of the water rushing from the room. The bathroom floor was still about six inches deep with water—the lip beneath the door keeping it inside the room—and Ronon stared, transfixed, at the little eddies that swirled around the tangle of his teammates’ bodies.
When he could bring himself to look at their faces, Teyla’s appeared distorted and out of proportion, somehow both blurry and exceptionally clear. For a minute Ronon stared at her in confused horror, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, to come up with a reason for it. Then he realized her face was actually underwater, held beneath the slowly receding tide of their ill-fated escape attempt by the weight of Sheppard and McKay on top of her.
Despite knowing that she was already dead, that it was too late, it was that image of Teyla’s face beneath the water that finally jerked Ronon out of his daze and pushed him upright.
It was an image that would plague his nightmares, much later. But at the moment his mind simply shut down and he shifted into auto pilot. With stiff, splashing steps, he began moving his teammates out into the hall.
Sheppard was first, lowered from the top of the pile and wiggled free from a tangle of limbs to lie on his back near one wall. His eyes were open—empty and accusing—and Ronon left them that way.
When he went back for McKay, he discovered that his holster had somehow gotten hooked in Teyla’s clothes. Ronon methodically worked it free, mind blank, fingers numb, moving with some kind of perverse, reflexive determination. Then, not thinking about how McKay looked like he could be sleeping, Ronon laid him beside Sheppard and went back for Teyla.
He turned her over before picking her up, needing for vague but deeply felt reasons to clear her face from the water before he did anything else. Then she was put in the hall with the others, shoulder to shoulder with McKay, the three of them blocking the way out.
Ronon stood there and looked down at them, taking in every detail.
The way tendrils of Teyla’s hair, heavy with water, clung to her face and neck in little half-circles. Her vest had ridden up in the back, and even though Ronon knew it wasn’t the case—it wouldn’t have stayed in that position through everything else—in his mind’s eye he saw Sheppard using the handle on the back of the collar to hold her head above the water once it got too high.
Beside her, McKay’s mouth was slightly open, like he was halfway to a snore that would never come. Aside from being soaked through, he seemed peaceful, much more peaceful than Ronon had ever seen him. But Ronon could see the hallway lights reflected in the water pooled inside his open mouth, could see them as clearly as looking in a mirror.
A choked mewl of pain rose in the back of Ronon’s throat, involuntary and unheeded. He’d turned to Sheppard and was staring at him, body swaying slightly as he stood there on shaky legs.
Sheppard didn’t look peaceful. Every fingernail on both of his hands was broken, and would have been bloody, too, if the water hadn’t washed away the evidence. They told a story of panic, of desperation.
One of confusion, too? Had they all spent their last few minutes alive wondering why Ronon had locked them in a death trap? Had they blamed him with their final breaths? Had they died calling for his help, or had they died cursing his name?
Ronon’s knees suddenly gave way and he fell onto them with an audible crack, bruising pain jolting through his body and yet registering as barely a whisper. He was hollow inside, he was raging fire, he felt nothing and everything and he was coming apart.
He was crying, but didn’t notice. He was trembling, but couldn’t feel it. He was weary in ways he couldn’t put into words, and he didn’t think he’d ever been so afraid or lonely in all his life.
He’d killed them.
He’d killed them he’d killed them he’d killed them.
No matter what he did, Sheppard, McKay, and Teyla kept dying. He’d tried everything he could think of: staying with them, leaving them alone, locking them up, leaving the damn planet. And every time it got them killed.
He didn’t know what to do. He was starting to think there was nothing he could do to stop the vicious cycle they were caught in. So, numb and aching, he simply waited for the loop to take them again.
Only it didn’t.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he understood. He knew he was stiff when he finally moved, but it could have been minutes or it could have been hours or it could have been days.
But he was still alive. And that was the problem.
When he thought back on all the loops, he suddenly realized that while the others had been killed in them, too, the loop had never ended until he died. Even when the others had died together or at nearly the same time, it wasn’t until he was dead that things started over.
Whether the loop was determined to have them all or whether it was always just waiting for Ronon specifically, he had to die.
He looked over the bodies of his friends—dead by his hands as surely as if he’d held them under the water himself—and let out a half hysterical, fully bitter burble of laughter.
If the loop wanted him, it could have him. He didn’t want to live in a world where Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay were dead, anyway. Didn’t think he could live in a world where he was the reason.
And if they didn’t loop this time, if it finally decided to let them go, he’d accept it. He’d find them in the other worlds. And apologize.
The weight of his blaster in his hand was easy and familiar, the turn of it inward awkward but doable. His fingers wanted to rebel, death by one’s own hand the coward’s way, but there was nothing here for him to actually leave.
He wasn’t digging a grave; he was opening a door.
He aimed carefully—he didn’t deserve merciful, but he did need quick—and fired.
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 3908
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death; TW: suicide
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
Ronon was no longer sure whether it was a blessing or a curse that the loop wouldn’t let him stay dead.
A fear had been growing in a corner of his mind, quiet and creeping like a vine, a whisper that they were never going to be free. He was going to be trapped in this facility, on this planet, watching his friends die over and over again for the rest of eternity. They were going to keep dying and he was going to keep following them and eventually it would break him. And then there would be nobody left who knew what was happening, nobody who could even try to save them.
He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on, and he didn’t want to find out.
The stinging ache of being eaten alive lingered in his skin and his whole body shuddered, as if trying to shake off the animals that no longer clung to him, all teeth and claws. His hands twitched but his voice was steady as he looked at the others with eyes that saw blood and burns and the hollows left by life sucked away and he lied.
He lied to their faces and said he remembered seeing something back in the bathroom that, now that he thought about it, probably needed further investigation.
He shrugged believably when Sheppard asked what he’d seen and mumbled something about a possible hidden door. When McKay peppered him with questions, he put on a suitably irritated expression and responded that he didn’t know anything for sure, and that’s why they had to go back. He met Teyla’s slightly skeptical gaze without a flinch, and only hated himself a little when she believed him.
As he’d anticipated, as he’d hoped, McKay grabbed on to the breadcrumb with both hands, steaming back out into the hallway with an air of eager, hopeful anticipation, everything else forgotten. Sheppard stayed at his heels with Teyla not far behind, leaving Ronon to follow last. Surreptitiously, he picked up a metal rod lying near the door before he exited the room. Then he hurried to join the others as they neared the bathroom, knowing he would have only a few minutes at most before even a cursory study of the room revealed his deception.
The truth was that he had noticed something interesting about the bathroom when they’d first peeked into it what felt like lifetimes ago. And while it hadn’t been a secret doorway, it had been door related.
McKay had been dismayed by the bathroom’s small size and what that might have said about the size of the facility it serviced, but Ronon was pretty sure that the room hadn’t originally been a bathroom at all. Instead of having a sliding door with a control panel, or the rarer swinging door with a knob, the bathroom had a hatch.
It opened into the bathroom, and had been left open when the base was abandoned. Ronon kept the door in the edge of his vision as the others moved into the room. He knew that he had to time his movements carefully to make sure none of them guessed his intentions at the last minute, something that was made all the harder by the room’s small size.
So when the others seemed content to linger just inside the doorway, he offered one more lie to get them moving. Motioning them on, he said he was pretty sure he’d seen the edge of a control panel on the far wall behind the cubicles. McKay immediately headed in that direction and disappeared behind the last partition, the others pulled along by his motion.
And as soon as Teyla had cleared the door’s path, Ronon made his move.
The door clanked sharply against its frame as he heaved it shut, the wheel on its face turning smoothly beneath his hands despite millennia of disuse. The rhythmic clunking of the gears sealing the door shut echoed down the hallway like the sound of running footsteps, and Ronon fought the urge to look over his shoulder. Once the wheel jammed against the end of its track, the impact jarring through his arms, he wedged the metal bar he’d brought with him through the spokes to lock it in place. Then he checked for any other locking mechanisms—the more the better, if he wanted to keep McKay secured—but didn’t find any.
From the other side of the door he could hear muffled thumping, slightly metallic in nature, and the faintest roar of shouts. There were no words, barely the semblance of pitch, but it let Ronon know that the others were alive. Raising one fist, he pounded on the door three times in a slow, steady progression. There was a pause in the noise coming from inside, then a flurry of knocks repeating his own.
He could picture them in his mind: McKay a bit frantic, a bit angry; Sheppard worried but leaning on annoyance instead; Teyla calm but concerned. They were confused now, but they’d understand later.
He had to figure out how to get them home, and he couldn’t risk their lives in the process. Not again. Not anymore.
Turning his back on the continuing sounds of frustration ringing through the metal, he looked up and down the hall. Deciding the left side of the facility had done enough damage—and provided no answers—he headed over to the right side.
The first few hallways he could recall well enough from his previous, more harried trips through this part of the facility. They and the rooms they contained had been devoid of danger or aid, so he carried on past them without pause. The remaining few hallways that made up what he thought might have been living quarters were equally empty, and he found himself at a major intersection.
A small pile of rubbish near one corner looked familiar, though it took him a few minutes to figure out why. Then he remembered—just down the hallway to his left, and then down another short one to the right, was where the Wraith had killed him. The first time.
He was surprised that he’d gotten to this point in the facility so quickly. When he’d been running on blind desperation, the facility had seemed much larger, more labyrinthine. Based on that, he’d anticipated a long and tedious search, with innumerable rooms set along endless, meandering corridors. But instead, it looked like answers might be closer than he’d expected.
The warm pinprick of hope was uncomfortable but welcome, and he turned to his right, into the unexplored corridor there.
It was disappointingly empty of anything useful, though it did house a large suite of bathroom facilities that were better suited to servicing the number of people Ronon calculated the facility could house than the tiny bathroom where he had left the rest of the team would have been on its own.
A quick survey of the corridor that led straight ahead from the intersection was equally disappointing. It only held several former labs of varying sizes, all long since stripped of any equipment or tools.
Back at the intersection, Ronon finally took the left corridor, retracing the path McKay’s screams had led him down. When he reached the first hallway that appeared on his right, he hesitated for a second before entering it. He half expected to see the Wraith standing there waiting for him when he turned the corner, but the hallway was full of nothing but shadows and dust.
Ronon did find the Wraith at its end, though.
There were a few small rooms on either side of the hall—storage rooms, he thought—but the doors at its end led into a large, airy control room with several stations that overlooked individual isolation rooms. A few of the rooms still had exam tables in them, open straps dangling over their edges, but most were completely empty.
Ronon found himself drawn to the station on the far right. Below it, in the isolation room it controlled, were two stasis pods, neatly placed side by side against the wall farthest from the control room. One pod was vacant, its window dark. But the other was lit, and despite the dust that had settled over it there was no mistaking the face behind the glass. It was a face Ronon would never forget, having stared into it twice while he died.
Part of him wanted to find a way down into the room so that he could take the Wraith out, wanted it so desperately that he could feel his fingernails cutting into his palms as his hands clenched into fists. But a larger part—or at least a stronger part—held back.
Ronon contemplated destroying the control station that overlooked the room, but didn’t want to risk shorting out the controls and freeing the Wraith anyway. He wasn’t sure exactly how to get to the isolation level yet, and if the Wraith got away before he got to it, anything might happen.
Anyone might die.
He found himself backing toward the control room door, somehow having decided what to do without realizing he’d decided it. He backed all the way into the hall, let the door shut again, and then destroyed its control panel as thoroughly as possible.
Then he turned and walked away without looking back.
He returned to the main hallway and continued down it, next examining the branch that held the room where Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay had been mysteriously cut apart while he’d watched helplessly from behind glass. When the two doors he hadn’t been behind still refused to open, he simply left. There was nothing in the two rooms he knew how to access that could help them, and he doubted getting into the other two rooms would be worth the effort, or the risk.
Surprisingly, there were no other rooms on the main hallway. Not much farther along, it ended with a left hand turn that found him back in another familiar corridor, standing just outside the electricity room. He’d found his way back to the other side of the facility.
More reflexively than spitefully, Ronon destroyed the room’s door controls again, just as he’d done before. Then he headed to the final part of the facility he hadn’t checked: the staircase that led down.
He didn’t have high hopes for what he might find there, so he wasn’t disappointed. Mostly it was a storage level—or at least it had been. There were even labels on some of the doors stating as much; he’d learned enough Lantean to pick out the faded script.
As he walked the length of the level, he mentally tracked what part of the facility he was under, and knew what was waiting for him at the end.
The last several doors on the level corresponded to the isolation rooms he’d viewed from the observation room above. Again showing uncharacteristic restraint, he didn’t open the last one when he reached it. He didn’t go in, didn’t wake the Wraith from its slumber, didn’t battle it to one of their deaths. Instead he carefully took apart the door control panel, destroying its components in a way that he knew would ensure it couldn’t be opened and avoiding damage he knew could cause it to open and lock in that position.
Then, with the facility mapped, all dangers identified, and no device or other cause of the loop found, he headed back for his team. He was no closer to answers, but at least he had fewer questions.
The main one remaining was what was causing the loop. Followed closely by how to stop it. And he needed the others to figure that out.
His mind was running through what he’d found—and what he hadn’t—when he was brought back to the present by a splash.
Ronon squinted down at the puddle he’d come to a stop in, confused and disoriented.
There was water in the hallway. Where there hadn’t been water before.
He was still a couple of meters away from the bathroom, but it was obvious that it was the source of the water. The puddle beneath his feet led directly to its door, and he could just make out the trickle leaking from the door’s bottom edge, the flow hugging the angles of the wall as it streamed down.
For a long moment, he just stared at the sealed door in blank incomprehension, his mind refusing to put together the pieces in a hopeless attempt at self preservation. But soon enough the reality of what he was seeing broke through the stupor, and he set off at a sprint.
It felt like his hands were two sizes too big as he struggled to free the metal bar that he’d meant to be a protective measure from the wheel. This close to the door, he could hear the faint hissing of water being forced through tiny cracks in its seal, and his anxiety surged in response, matching the tension in perfect pitch. With every nerve ending alight, the clang of the bar hitting the floor jolted through his body like physical pain.
As his pulse throbbed in his throat like a wounded bird, he grabbed the wheel and spun it backwards as quickly as he could, hand over hand. The clacking of the gears matched the frantic pace of his heartbeat, the two keeping time with the single word staccato of his thoughts.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
Just when he’d begun to believe that he wouldn’t find the end of the track, that the wheel would just keep turning forever while the hissing drove him mad, it slammed to a stop.
Panting, Ronon pushed. The door didn’t budge.
He gave the wheel a quick check, to make sure he’d actually opened it all the way. He had, but while the leak at the bottom looked like it had grown in size, he couldn’t tell whether the door itself had moved at all. Adjusting so that he was pressing against an area closer to where it opened—he knew he only needed to create a small gap to get it opened all the way—he tried again.
He gritted his teeth against the memories and focused on pushing. Here he was again, battling death with another door. Only this time he was on the safe side. Only this time he’d locked his friends on the dangerous one.
Muscles quivering, dreading discovering what was on the other side while also knowing what it would be, he pushed until it felt like his arms were going to be ripped from their sockets. The only signs that he was making any progress at all were the few jets of water that erupted around the edges of the door, indications of pressure being released. One of them sprayed a mist across his face that turned to rainbow colors in the hallway lights, and he blinked against the droplets as he pushed with everything he had, and then asked his body for more.
He was giving out, could feel himself waning, and he let out a cry of desperation and frustration as he gave one last surge. And something finally gave.
The door was sucked violently inwards, and Ronon’s legs were knocked out from under him by the wave of water that rushed around it and into the hall. The current of the flow was strong enough that it actually carried him away from the bathroom, but he scrambled back to his feet as soon as he could find them and sloshed back to the door.
It had been pushed partially closed again by the water’s escape. A steady stream was still pouring from the room, the flow now down to about knee height and dropping.
When Ronon attempted to push the door further open, it only moved another inch or two before hitting something. He couldn’t see what the impediment was—it was behind the door, and he couldn’t yet fit his head through the gap between the door and the frame. But whatever the blockage was, it offered less resistance than the water had, so with a bit more effort from his trembling limbs he was able to shove the door far enough open that he could slip inside.
As he did, his attention was drawn to a fist-sized hole in the wall about six inches to the side of the door frame. A pipe within the wall—broken in a way that looked suspiciously like gunfire damage—was gurgling noisily, water burbling down its sides to disappear inside the wall.
It was then that Ronon knew what had happened.
His blood felt thick and sluggish in his veins as he turned to look into the room. The cubicle wall caught him as the world titled sideways.
There, behind the door, were Teyla, Sheppard, and McKay.
They were on top of one another, having been piled together against the door by the force of the water rushing from the room. The bathroom floor was still about six inches deep with water—the lip beneath the door keeping it inside the room—and Ronon stared, transfixed, at the little eddies that swirled around the tangle of his teammates’ bodies.
When he could bring himself to look at their faces, Teyla’s appeared distorted and out of proportion, somehow both blurry and exceptionally clear. For a minute Ronon stared at her in confused horror, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, to come up with a reason for it. Then he realized her face was actually underwater, held beneath the slowly receding tide of their ill-fated escape attempt by the weight of Sheppard and McKay on top of her.
Despite knowing that she was already dead, that it was too late, it was that image of Teyla’s face beneath the water that finally jerked Ronon out of his daze and pushed him upright.
It was an image that would plague his nightmares, much later. But at the moment his mind simply shut down and he shifted into auto pilot. With stiff, splashing steps, he began moving his teammates out into the hall.
Sheppard was first, lowered from the top of the pile and wiggled free from a tangle of limbs to lie on his back near one wall. His eyes were open—empty and accusing—and Ronon left them that way.
When he went back for McKay, he discovered that his holster had somehow gotten hooked in Teyla’s clothes. Ronon methodically worked it free, mind blank, fingers numb, moving with some kind of perverse, reflexive determination. Then, not thinking about how McKay looked like he could be sleeping, Ronon laid him beside Sheppard and went back for Teyla.
He turned her over before picking her up, needing for vague but deeply felt reasons to clear her face from the water before he did anything else. Then she was put in the hall with the others, shoulder to shoulder with McKay, the three of them blocking the way out.
Ronon stood there and looked down at them, taking in every detail.
The way tendrils of Teyla’s hair, heavy with water, clung to her face and neck in little half-circles. Her vest had ridden up in the back, and even though Ronon knew it wasn’t the case—it wouldn’t have stayed in that position through everything else—in his mind’s eye he saw Sheppard using the handle on the back of the collar to hold her head above the water once it got too high.
Beside her, McKay’s mouth was slightly open, like he was halfway to a snore that would never come. Aside from being soaked through, he seemed peaceful, much more peaceful than Ronon had ever seen him. But Ronon could see the hallway lights reflected in the water pooled inside his open mouth, could see them as clearly as looking in a mirror.
A choked mewl of pain rose in the back of Ronon’s throat, involuntary and unheeded. He’d turned to Sheppard and was staring at him, body swaying slightly as he stood there on shaky legs.
Sheppard didn’t look peaceful. Every fingernail on both of his hands was broken, and would have been bloody, too, if the water hadn’t washed away the evidence. They told a story of panic, of desperation.
One of confusion, too? Had they all spent their last few minutes alive wondering why Ronon had locked them in a death trap? Had they blamed him with their final breaths? Had they died calling for his help, or had they died cursing his name?
Ronon’s knees suddenly gave way and he fell onto them with an audible crack, bruising pain jolting through his body and yet registering as barely a whisper. He was hollow inside, he was raging fire, he felt nothing and everything and he was coming apart.
He was crying, but didn’t notice. He was trembling, but couldn’t feel it. He was weary in ways he couldn’t put into words, and he didn’t think he’d ever been so afraid or lonely in all his life.
He’d killed them.
He’d killed them he’d killed them he’d killed them.
No matter what he did, Sheppard, McKay, and Teyla kept dying. He’d tried everything he could think of: staying with them, leaving them alone, locking them up, leaving the damn planet. And every time it got them killed.
He didn’t know what to do. He was starting to think there was nothing he could do to stop the vicious cycle they were caught in. So, numb and aching, he simply waited for the loop to take them again.
Only it didn’t.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he understood. He knew he was stiff when he finally moved, but it could have been minutes or it could have been hours or it could have been days.
But he was still alive. And that was the problem.
When he thought back on all the loops, he suddenly realized that while the others had been killed in them, too, the loop had never ended until he died. Even when the others had died together or at nearly the same time, it wasn’t until he was dead that things started over.
Whether the loop was determined to have them all or whether it was always just waiting for Ronon specifically, he had to die.
He looked over the bodies of his friends—dead by his hands as surely as if he’d held them under the water himself—and let out a half hysterical, fully bitter burble of laughter.
If the loop wanted him, it could have him. He didn’t want to live in a world where Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay were dead, anyway. Didn’t think he could live in a world where he was the reason.
And if they didn’t loop this time, if it finally decided to let them go, he’d accept it. He’d find them in the other worlds. And apologize.
The weight of his blaster in his hand was easy and familiar, the turn of it inward awkward but doable. His fingers wanted to rebel, death by one’s own hand the coward’s way, but there was nothing here for him to actually leave.
He wasn’t digging a grave; he was opening a door.
He aimed carefully—he didn’t deserve merciful, but he did need quick—and fired.