The One Where They Are Gladiators
Characters: Sheppard, McKay. Notes: Thanks to z_rayne for the tremendously helpful beta, and omg, so *fast*.
This story is for seperis because she is a very special birthday girl who I adore. Last year, I showed my love through SV mpreg, this year, we have SGA prison fic. Title is because I have no idea just how ambitious I feel. I’m thinking I will write a couple more of these for the next two or three nights. *g*
Summary: I think the title and the cut tag are sufficient, yes.
1 – The One Where They Are Gladiators
“This is insane. This is—this is,” McKay babbles as he takes in the arena.
The many, many thousands of people packed in the stands and seats are especially daunting, like something taken straight out of Earth’s Roman history books and plunked down smack dab in the middle of another galaxy.
“At least you don’t have to go out there,” John mutters, studying the layout intently.
“That guy. One in the blue, not the one in the green. His left side is injured, I think,” McKay whispers, leaning against John’s bicep to see.
“Already noticed, but thanks,” John says.
McKay jumps next to him seeing the guy in blue get gutted with a dagger from behind, somewhere around his spine. McKay doesn’t manage to suppress his whimper, and John doesn’t manage to suppress his wince, so he figures they’re about even.
“Well, scratch one weakness off that sadly short list of things I can exploit here,” John mutters.
“It’s not funny; oh God, you’re probably going to die out there,” McKay says, drawing away from John’s arm.
“Your confidence in me is really making me glow, McKay,” John says.
“Of course I’m confident in you. I have plenty of confidence in you. If this were a fair fight, you know, with guns or a bomb or…jeez, anything other than freaking *daggers*…but you’re totally screwed with this.”
John blinks. “No, really, stop building me up like this. It’s just getting me all encouraged.”
McKay scowls, and leans against the wall heavily, completely focused on John. The bars to the gateway slowly slide open. One guard stands at attention outside and the other one hands John a broadsword and a shield. John slowly straps the shield to his arm, the soft leather barely vaguely comforting because, hey, a *shield*. He’s going out there with a shield.
Stupid Pegasus Galaxy with its stupid Wraith and its stupid shields.
“…are you fucking *kidding me*?” McKay yells as the bars start coming back down, eyes fixed on John’s arm. John will never admit it, but he is so with McKay on this one. He fumbles as he gets the shield into place but he manages to grin at McKay.
“Relax, McKay. Just knowing you’re here waiting to say how you can’t believe I survived this is incentive enough for me to win.”
“I really hope so,” is the soft reply, and it’s a little too fervent for John to do anything but continue to smile as the guard points him through the gates.
John is aware they’re introducing him, but right now, it is all he can do to grip the sword properly. The crowd roars and chants, “Irkses, Irkses!”
John assumes that’s the tall, slightly round guy who’s just finished off the guy in blue. Irkses grins at him, only….all his teeth are missing in the front. It’s not a pretty picture and John rolls his shoulder to loosen it up.
He’s beginning to wish he paid more attention in those fencing classes his mom tried to enroll him in, to “release all that pent-up energy, John!”
But no, no, he found much cooler ways to release that energy, not realizing that one day, he’d be in a freaking sword fight in another galaxy, fighting for his life against the Jolly Green Giant here.
Okay. Just—think. You’ve seen Braveheart. And Monty Python. And Beastmaster, and all those Conan movies. Just…it can’t be that hard. John thinks, slowly walking up to meet Irkses, trying to test out different grips on the sword subtly as he inches closer.
“Hey there. Lieutenant Colonel John–” he swallows a hiss as he ducks the man’s vicious swing of his sword.
“Sheppard!” he finishes, bringing up the shield to block the next blow. Ow, oh God, he probably had a broken ulna now. “You could at least finish introductions,” he yells insensibly, and tries out a thrust of his own.
And promptly falls flat on his chest, completely misjudging his stance. He tucks and rolls, and blocks the next two thrusts, kicking out a leg and managing to knock Irkses off balance.
“Okay, hey, let’s go!” John yells, still shaking off the first blow to the damn shield.
Fuck, this guy can really go. John manages to half-block the next parry, but he’s seriously outclassed here. Irkses lands another heavy blow to the shield, one, two, three times in a row, leaving John reeling and hazily blinking up at the crowd.
Fortunately, he’s been a denizen of the fine Pegasus Galaxy for going on two years now, and he knows how to play this. He lets out a little groan as he allows the sword to cut his arm, a long thin line of blood appearing. The crowd applauds wildly, but it’s white noise to John. He lets his blocks get a little bit more sluggish, a little lazier and finally, drops the sword with a loud thump against the sandy ground, making a light show of his desperate grab. Irkses smashes at his face with a beefy fist and John goes down hard enough to see stars. He still manages to control his fall enough so that his hand is perfectly aligned with his fallen sword.
Irkses roars and does a fancy little maneuver with the sword in mid-air, much to the audience’s loud, screaming approval. Ah, showmanship. It can be a bitch sometimes, John thinks happily, seizing his moment as he sees the sword cutting through the air, aimed directly at his stomach, raising his own shield arm and thrusting up, as hard as he can.
Irkses blinks bright blue eyes down at him; McKay’s eyes, is all John can think hazily as his own arm falls to the side from the force of taking Irkses’ last blow.
The crowd is roaring again now, only a different name—“Sheppard, Sheppard, Sheppard.”
“Kinda sucks,” John mumbles to the fallen Green Giant dizzily. “The way they turn on you on a dime, like that.”
He passes out.
***
John feels cool water on his stomach, his chest, his legs, light fingers gently cleaning off the dirt and grime that can’t help but build up in this place. The feather-gentle fingers aren’t enough to make him wake up fully.
He tries to say something, but a finger is pressed to his lips and John swallows the words.
It’s McKay of course, and John knows this because the man never stops talking, apparently not even when John can’t understand the words.
***
John wakes up with a feeling not unlike one of those hangovers from his early twenties. He rolls over on his side—tries to at least, only to feel an arm tightening around his stomach. He forces open an eyelid and sees McKay blinking awake right next to him.
“Hey, you’re up again,” McKay says, yawning. He seems to freeze for a moment as he takes in the sight of his own palm, fingers stretched wide open on the warm skin of John’s stomach. “Oh, uh, sorry.”
“I feel exhausted,” John says, rubbing at his eyes, starting to wonder why McKay isn’t moving yet when he finally does.
“Not surprising. Sword was tipped with a nice little local poison, but luckily, you pulled off a nice Sheppard-esque miracle and you’re immune. The guards all thought you were a goner.” McKay says it all matter of factly, but there was a little…something else behind it.
John has to swallow because fuck, it hadn’t even occurred to him when he’d let the other man draw blood. *Poison*.
“I hate this motherfucking planet,” he moans, “and I think I’d give up this morning’s oatmeal-wannabe for a pillow.”
“Oh,” McKay says. “Well. Uh. Yeah. Me, too.”
John starts to sit up, but McKay’s hand on his chest stops him. “Really, shouldn’t move that much.”
“It was just a little nick. And some poison,” John says, fighting off McKay’s hand.
McKay rolls his eyes. “Here, I’ll get you some water.”
John drinks thirstily until he realizes the container is more than halfway gone. He hands it back over to McKay, hand shaking with fine tremors.
“Kinda feeling queasy,” he admits.
“Well, you’ve been out for two weeks, it’s not surprising,” McKay says briskly.
“What?”
“Thirteen days, actually. Like I said, they really thought that poison ought to have killed you.”
“That’s not even possible,” John says slowly. “They said they’d kill us if one of us didn’t take twenty rounds in the gladiator pits. Twenty in a fucking row.”
“Yeah, I managed to remember that,” McKay says, tight-lipped.
John stares. “You….”
“Yes, I convinced the guards to let me take your place, and there was this whole thing where I had to run this stupid gauntlet to become your ‘champion,’ and through some creative screaming, alternate throws of sand, well-calculated sword plunges and generally dirty fighting, I have managed to be here to greet Prince Charming when he finally deigns to wake up,” McKay says, still standing stiffly.
John manages to ignore the gauntlet and sand mentions as he finally takes in all the crappy, haphazard bandages on various portions of McKay’s skin, the tight dressing around his left knee, the barely scabbing cut under his chin.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” John says, head falling back to the pallet.
McKay’s eyes widen. “What the hell for?”
“For—for *this*,” John gestures violently downward at his body. “I should have been there to do this. You shouldn’t have had to.”
“Yes, way to slack off and get yourself poisoned, Sheppard,” McKay sighs, and resumes his position at John’s side on the pallet.
“Why didn’t you just wait for me to heal and wake up and let me fight this out when I could?” John says angrily.
“Oh, how I’ve missed your timely ridiculous questions,” McKay says, but it’s tinged with a degree of deep fondness that keeps John silent. “We have to ‘earn our keep,’” McKay says tiredly. “If we want our tasty gruel and water, and a couple pieces of cloth for some nifty bandages, why, we must entertain the masses. I stepped up.”
John shuts his eyes. “I’m taking the last six.”
“You just crawl right on out of this holding cell and do that, Sheppard. Maybe they’ll give you a nice light dagger since you’re not strong enough to grip the sword,” McKay says snidely, but he’s gently lifting John’s head and shoulders to lean against his chest.
John opens his eyes, questioning. “Instant pillow,” McKay says. “Now shut up and let me get some sleep. Next match is in a couple hours, and this is the guy who rode the tiger thing last week.”
John stares at him long enough for McKay to open his eyes again. “I have a plan,” McKay says impatiently, but John can see that he’s not lying; that he actually *does*, so he groans into McKay’s chest, and somehow, it feels very familiar, like this is a position his body is used to.
McKay’s fingers are curling through John’s hair in small, soft patterns John could almost predict if he weren’t so tired.
***
John wakes up because it’s cold and he can’t remember ever feeling cold in this cell, which is rather odd. He eases himself up on an elbow and….
McKay’s crumpled on the floor, a few feet away, head barely propped up against the wall. John rolls off the pallet and shakily gets to his feet. The room sways unevenly, and he thinks, fuck this, and gets to his knees, crawling the rest of the way.
“McKay?” he whispers. “Rodney!” a little more forcefully when McKay doesn’t even move. Then John grasps McKay’s hand on his own side, and sees the dried blood underneath it.
“Oh God,” John mutters, eases McKay up a little straighter. He takes a deep breath and places him flat on the floor, crawls back over to the pallet to slide it over and rolls McKay on it with the smallest movements he can manage.
“Rodney?” he repeats over and over again, hits McKay lightly on the cheek a couple of times. He eases up McKay’s shirt, away from his skin and grimaces at the mess in front of him.
For the first time, he takes in the small box on the floor. Damn, he has to do better than this—observation is *everything* here. He forces himself to his feet again this time and walks over slowly, picking his way through the box.
Needle. Thread, a few other things. McKay’s been…busy while John was out. John can barely see so he inches his way to the bars for a little bit better light and threads the needle on his sixth try.
He cleans up McKay as best he can, and pierces the skin lightly with the needle, stitching up the wound in tiny increments; maybe it won’t even scar. McKay hasn’t stirred once, and John tries (and fails) not to worry about that too much. The wound is pretty deep, but McKay’s breathing is reassuringly regular.
John hesitantly touches McKay’s hair, remembering how much better it made him feel over the last few days. While he’s sitting there, he manages to do a few leg stretches, trying to get some feeling back in too long unused limbs.
***
McKay awakes with a jerk of his head and a curse. “Sheppard?” he asks dizzily.
“Hey, at least yours wasn’t poisoned?” John manages feebly.
“For all you know!”
John smiles down at him, something in his chest easing at McKay’s rejoinder. “How’re you feeling?”
“I got a mace to my back and a sword to my gut. How do you think?” McKay asks, twisting to get more comfortable in his position on John’s thigh.
“How’d you win?”
“Oh, I used the sword to cut the chain from the mace and um.”
John narrows his eyes. “Um?” he parrots.
“…choked him.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
“…thanks.”
“How long was I out again?” John sighs.
“Five days.”
John froze, hand clenching into a fist. “You mean—one more fight?”
“How long have I been out?” McKay says, wincing.
“Eight hours. Maybe more. It’s hard to tell.”
“Shit. The next one can’t be more than a couple hours away.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’ve been out on your ass for over two weeks,” McKay says shakily.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll do this, McKay.”
Something in John’s voice must finally resonate, because McKay stills, fingers twisting and untwisting in John’s trousers.
“You’ll be up against this total creep, Maxim. I’ve never seen him up close, no one has. He wears this stupid iron mask—I know, I know, don’t even say it. He’s smart, fast. Reminds me of you, actually. He’s won something like, twelve straight, so he’s going to wanting this as much as you.”
John massages McKay’s wounded arm lightly, wondering if passing out is a viable fighting strategy.
“Uh, one other thing. Since it’s the last fight, you don’t get a weapon. You know. Makes it sporting.”
“You totally let yourself get stabbed on purpose,” John says weakly, but McKay is already out like a light.
***
John tries to repeat the Braveheart, Conon, Monty Python mantra to himself again only it’s rather shot since he doesn’t even have the sword this time. He walks pretty straight out to meet Maxim, keeping his eyes peeled. He’s going to have to get the other man’s—fuck, it’s a freaking *claymore*–weapons away from him.
“Y’know, if you wanted to make this even more interesting, I’ll take the dagger,” John says steadily.
“I’ve been on this hellhole of a planet for more than two weeks now, and suddenly, it’s all worth it.”
Maxim’s left hand moves off his sword slightly to reveal a smaller sword tucked into his belt, but John’s still focused on the voice, heart hammering.
“Ronon?” John asks incredulously.
“How far away is McKay?” Ronon asks, making a threatening move with the claymore that John lazily steps aside of.
“Two hundred feet, through the third gate by the tall guard in the white feathers,” John says, circling Ronon.
“Hmm. Okay.” And with that, Ronon pulls off his mask and pitches it at the main section of the arena just as he hands John the smaller sword.
The bomb goes off with a bright flash, a loud bang and the crowd’s screaming is suddenly vividly pleasing to John.
Ronon’s pulling him along as they vault in the general direction of McKay, and John can hear gunfire in the periphery. John swipes at a couple of the guards, aim dead on, but Ronon just goes with a classic fist to the face maneuver that John can’t really argue with.
Ronon doesn’t go to the right door at first, instead, neatly slams a guard against a wall and tugs out his set of keys. He unlocks the first cell, the second, the third and tosses the set at another young woman with a feral glint in her eye.
“Been nice,” Ronon says simply as she smiles and inclines her head, and their fellow prisoners all rush out of their cells, launching themselves at the guards as they’re starting to filter through the cells.
John leads the way to McKay and lets Ronon smack around the guards while John fishes the keys off the ground and throws open the door to the cell.
“I know we’ve been having the time of our lives, McKay, but I’m afraid its time to blow this popsicle stand,” he says to McKay as he lifts him to his side, McKay’s dead weight nearly making him fold over. John grits his teeth and drags his friend out the door.
Ronon’s making ‘hurry, hurry’ motions and John feels and welcomes the surge of adrenaline through his body. He waves off Ronon’s help in carrying McKay.
“No, I want you to be able to take out anything between us and the gate,” John directs and Ronon shrugs and lands a particularly vicious kick on someone.
“Was the bomb in your helmet the whole time?” John asks curiously as they run.
“Oh yeah.”
“Weren’t you afraid it’d go off?”
“Sure. It got hit several times. Pretty hard, too.”
John blinks, but it seems to be the end of the conversation for Ronon, and really, talking takes up too much energy anyway. Teyla, Lorne and six of John’s new favorite marines come running up, take in the whole and intact duo of John and McKay, and grin. Teyla eases her shoulder under McKay’s other side and the stitch John didn’t even know was in his side eases tremendously, and they all run like hell toward the gate, Lorne and the marines turning to fire a few shots at whoever the hell’s shooting arrows at them.
The gate opens in a burst of watery blue glory and John runs toward it, stops inches away and twists to yell over his shoulder, “Freeeeeeeedooooommmmm!” at the very startled guards many, many yards in their dust.
Only a couple marines and Ronon are left to witness it, the marines grinning so hard John can’t help but smirk back as he steps through the gate with McKay and Teyla; he’ll blame it on the fever he’s sure he has later.
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