“Again, I must apologize, Dr. Weir. It is just that the Magi are so powerful. We could not believe that they would be beaten by any but their own.”

Elizabeth forced herself to calm. She was beginning to understand. The test had simply been exposure to a piece of Ancient technology. So the Magi were just people who could use Ancient tech – people with the gene.

“What power do the Magi have exactly?”

“Different ones. Some are protected like the gods . . . they walk through our worst assaults completely unharmed. Others possess devices capable of healing. Many were healers before the war. Others wield weapons like we have never seen. Some can become invisible, transport themselves from place to place, find you even in a sea of people . . . they are a formidable enemy.”

And yet they were still at war. Maybe it was a lie that Elizabeth was too used to hearing from all the military bureaucrats she’d ever encountered, but wasn’t overwhelming force supposed to lead to swift and unequivocal victory?

“So they knew the Gate activated . . . they wanted us.” Elizabeth knew too well what the man had wanted her for. She forced the memory from her mind even as it swelled up, unbidden. She had been touched like that many times – with sure and unmistakable intent. But this had been the first time she had been afraid. “Why would they . . . we could offer them valuable trade.” How valuable, Sheran could never know.

Sheran appeared smug, stepping forward and looking down at Elizabeth where she was seated. She flinched back from the appraisal in his gaze. “Oh, Dr. Weir, the Magi need not trade. They have everything they need. The Gate did not breathe when they controlled it.”

“Then how come . . . we were told that they were here for us.”

Sheran’s hand fell heavily on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “It is a technique in this war of ours. It is a show of power, nothing more. They can know things – find people. In a war like ours, where they must face whole armies, they go for the spirit. No one would be so naïve as to claim that the spirit is not open for conquest. Generals . . . men of power, bring their wives with them to the camps to protect them from one show of the Magi’s power. They think that the women will be safe here. But as you saw yourself, nowhere is safe. Our world will not be safe until they are destroyed.”

Elizabeth gulped. She had heard of such things before. She knew about rapes. The controversies in Okinawa, the raping of women throughout medieval campaigns, Vietnam, Nanjing. It didn’t matter who or when. But she’d chalked it all up to culture in the old days, battle-weary insanity in the new. It was what soldiers did because they lost control. It was never a deliberate weapon.

She had read about the connections between war and sexuality, listened to the other disgruntled feminists back in the days where idealism was what mattered, not action. But she had never believed that war was just some ridiculous extension of the male spirit. The cynical feminist in her knew that women were just as capable of killing. Delicacy and grace and beauty could only mask the deadliness that surged beneath. Even Teyla, with her warm smile and subtle wit, could be beautifully fatal, as she had just proved.

But Sheran was right - you could attack a soldier’s body but you could also attack his spirit. Not his body, but his wife’s. Perhaps that was the ultimate in attrition. Anything you cared about could be a weapon.

“How many are there?” she asked, voice shaking. How many men willing to do anything?

“Few. Their powers tire. They get careless. But we must do our best to hold them. We have done so for years. It has taken the resources of our entire world. But we will overthrow their tyranny.”

If that wasn’t the party line, Elizabeth didn’t know what was. Sheran smiled. Despite the bombast behind his words, she wasn’t sure how convincing he was to his people. This was a horrible war, Magi or no.

“But many of the wounds we’ve seen are not . . . magical.” Blood and gangrene and filth, so different than the modern austerity of Atlantis, the transcendental purity of it’s drone weapons, like the cleansing light of atonement and retribution from on high.

“There is a group of separatists . . . a few traitorous nations that have allied with the Magi. They believe that the Magi truly are the only ones who can fight the Wraith. But they are failing. Our troops advance, even through the mud and mire. We fight. Inch by inch. We’ve taken back the Stargate and soon we will have them on their knees!” His voice shook with conviction, like a kamikaze warrior, the second before destruction.

Though the circumstances were different, the fighting style reminded her of World War I. There was no victory to be had. It was a doomed stalemate – trenches and barbed wire. It was the beginning of wars of attrition, only without the Stargate, without people and technology from outside, there would be no break . . . no end until one side bled the other dry.

“How will you know when you have won?”

Sheran smiled. “I think it is obvious, Dr. Weir. We will have won when the last of the Magi is dead.”

"We will strand them without a gate forever! Remember how the DHD on the last planet went ka-boom? Well, this one’s going to do the very same thing. I can fix the Rejekan’s DHD with parts from that unsalvageable jumper Stackhouse found on P7Z-537 but we do not have the infinite supplies to just ka-boom every time you please!”

Ford was scowling, but somehow he didn’t seem to be taking Radek’s claim seriously. This was the fate of an entire world. People in Pegasus depended on their gate. They couldn’t just . . .

“Well, next time we find some spare parts you can fix it, right Doc?” Ford sounded like a little boy who’d just crashed his kite, or some all-American ridiculousness.

“It’s not as simple as that . . .”

“But, if you found some suitable ones, you could?”

“Maybe. With a lot of work . . .”

Ford clapped him on the back. “Good. Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that you want to leave these people stranded until when I may or may not have found suitable parts to possibly fix a mostly unfixable problem that we caused because you were too impatient to . . .”

"They're the enemy, Doc. They cooperated with the Genii. They're partially responsible for kidnapping Major Sheppard and Dr. McKay. They don't deserve your sympathy." Ford practically spat it.

"Maybe they are just weak planet with no desires other then self-governance, yes? Caught in crossfire between two giants with nothing to do except bow down to obviously superior force in face a losing fight against them?" Americans could never understand. They said, 'you're either with us or against us,' and never stopped to ask themselves what that meant.

"We're not talking about Chechnya!" Ford yelled.

Radek spun around, not sure which stung more, his nationalistic pride or Ford's ignorance - and this was the man that would be leading them if Sheppard did not return.

"We don't leave people behind." That was a lie, Radek knew. Every army, every fight, every government asked its people to sacrifice, sent people to their death knowingly in the name of the greater good. Ford's naiveté was astounding, if not surprising. Radek felt sorry for the kid, believing everything Sheppard told him, believing that it wasn't sometimes better to cut your losses. "That's why we have to go back for Dr. McKay."

"At what costs? Lieutenant Ford, please, this is reality. We cannot do this without destroying the Elian gate. Rodney is my friend too, but we cannot just . . ."

"I have my orders."

"Perhaps Sheppard is just saying so because he wants to save his lover." Radek clamped down on his tongue the second the words came out of his mouth. He didn't mean that. Sheppard was a good man. He honestly believed in 'no man gets left behind.' He was a medEvac pilot, after all. But there was always that doubt - ever since Rodney had spewed out that drunken confession, Radek couldn't help but see Sheppard in a different light, question his actions towards the head of the science team. He was ashamed that he should think so.

Ford's breaths came in gasping and barely under control. He looked ready to punch something, and Radek took a step back to ensure it wasn't him. "Major Sheppard is my commanding officer and Dr. McKay is my teammate. They might not be good Christians, but they are not sinners. Dial-up the Gate, or I'll . . . I’ll shoot you."

They both knew that Ford didn’t mean it. But it didn’t matter what he would and would not do. Words were actions too.

Radek could do nothing but stare straight ahead and blink. He'd heard about the ridiculous anti-homosexual sentiments in the American military, the Marines especially, but he had never imagined. He couldn't fathom that degree of fear and hatred in the usually so bubbly and good-natured Ford, or even in Sergeant Bates, for all his brooding.

"You are so deep in the Nile you have reached Cairo," Radek muttered. Ford, of all people, should have seen.

"Let's just pretend that actually made sense. Whatever it was: I. Don't. Care. Dial the Gate. Now."

Radek sighed. He was just so tired – too tired. There was no escape. No matter where you went it was always the same. As much as Rodney liked to bitch about the military needing them, it was the men with guns in power. It always would be, because the will to conquer would never be vanquished, even if personal demons were the only things left to fight.

“Sir . . . aren’t you supposed to be in the infirmary?” Wow, he had to be looking pretty damned bad if Bates was concerned about his health.

John forced himself to stand straighter, even if it did pull at the sutures. His skin still felt like it didn’t fit. Whatever Beckett had given him had momentarily pushed the pain to the side, taken the edge off enough that he could put on a brave face for his subordinate, but not enough that he could forget about it.

Even then . . . he could feel the blade. He knew the letters, but not the words. Each and every person . . . every name. It was too much, yet not enough. Those lives were worth more than just a scar on a stranger’s back. But then again, if he hadn’t done what he did, Elizabeth’s name would be carved there, and Rodney’s, and maybe Teyla and Beckett and Ford, maybe all of Earth if the Wraith had come and found the Genii on Atlantis. It seemed as though whatever he did, he would be marked.

John took in a deep breath, made himself focus. He needed to put this behind him. What was done was done. Now was not the time for revenge, but the time for answers.

“How’s the prisoner doing, Sergeant?” He’d noticed Bates’ bruised knuckles. He hoped the man had something to show for it.

“Won’t talk, Sir.”

Of course Kolya would never talk to Bates. Bates had nothing to offer him. “I’m sure you tried, Sergeant.” By the blood on Bates’ left jacket sleeve, it seemed he’d tried pretty hard.

“Yes, Sir.”

“I’m going to be in with the prisoner. I want you to stay here and keep everyone else out.” John forced a strength into his voice that he just didn’t have right now. His back throbbed in time with his pulse.

And Bates must have sensed it. “I’m sorry, Sir, but I can’t allow you in with the prisoner unsupervised. You are in a state in which it would be possible for him to overpower you and compromise base security.”

John narrowed his eyes at Bates. The man did have a point. He wasn’t in any condition to fight – there was no hiding that. But he needed to do this. And he needed for Bates to stay out of it, because Kolya knew. He knew about Rodney, and it would be the first thing he’d try to use against John. Bates could not hear that. Bates was the kind of guy who made ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ a necessity. He was the kind of guy who would let what his CO did in the bedroom affect his ability to serve under him. John refused to be vulnerable to that.

“I’ll be fine, Sergeant.”

“Maybe we should ask Beckett about that, Sir,” Bates tossed back, looking straight ahead, like a good soldier.

John wanted to growl his frustration, but he schooled his features. He couldn’t back down on this. But Bates clearly wasn’t gong to budge either. He decided to just walk through that door and see if Bates would stop him.

Bates didn’t, but he followed.

Kolya was sitting on a bench in the holding cell. He sported a split lip and one eye beginning to look swollen and bruised around the edges, yet he didn’t, for a second, look any less formidable.

When he looked up and saw John, he smiled. It took all John’s will power not to open the door and kill him right then for that smile alone. It was a perversion of an intimate smile. It said, ‘I’m glad to see you.’ But it was ‘glad to see you’ the way a cat is glad to see a mouse.

“Major Sheppard. Up and about so soon?”

“You’d better believe it, Kolya,” John growled with what they both knew was false bravado.

Kolya nodded. “I admire that. Sadly for you, Major, dragging your poor beaten body down here does nothing to persuade me to give you the information you so desperately want.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“You’re in no condition to make demands of me, Major. I know how you must be feeling right now – tired, hurting, like you want to curl yourself up like a woman and cry yourself to sleep. I know how deep your wounds are. I was there, remember?”

John growled, stepping right up so he could look Kolya in the eyes. “Where’s Rodney?”

“He’s being shown a good time, Major. Perhaps in a few days when you’re feeling better, we might discuss it . . . maybe when you’re strong enough to actually face me instead of standing there ready to topple over.” In truth, that was a pretty accurate description of John’s feeling right now. Maybe it was Carson’s drugs or maybe the lingering effects of blood loss, but he just felt like lying down, closing his eyes and letting this ache fade into oblivion.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t’ leave Rodney. Anger flared, another cut of the blade . . . another strike. “I don’t need physical strength to break you, Kolya,” John said. And then suddenly the anger had reached the outskirts of his mind. It blazed through everything: his mind, his muscles, his spirit.

It spilled out of him, poured, congealed . . . then Kolya was being held in a chokehold by a long strip of semi-iridescent metal. John looked around for its source, finding it attached to one of the slats of the tough metal cage.

“What?” Kolya coughed as the thing released its grip just slightly.

“How’d you do that, Sir?” Bates asked in wonder, weapon still held at the ready at the sudden motion. They’d never even thought of this before.

“Magic,” John answered. “Now, I told you I can take care of myself, Sergeant.

“Yes, Sir!” Bates barked it out, more military and maybe with a little more respect than usual. Good.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Kolya asked, hands still clamped around the brace restraining him.

“Oh, I think it’d be better if we had some alone time, doncha think?” John said as casually as he could, strolling up to the cell door as it opened.

His back throbbed, but it only made him more determined.

“And now that we’re alone, you can tell me where you’re keeping Rodney.”

Kolya sneered. “Now why would I do that, Major? You have me in a cell from which escape seems unlikely. Dr. McKay is my only bargaining chip. After what I did to you, how am I supposed to trust that you won’t just kill me the moment you get him back?”

John shrugged, swallowing the yelp that welled up from the stretching it caused his back. “I’m a trustworthy sort of guy.”

Kolya snorted. “Trustworthy enough to double-cross and steal from the Genii.”

“You double-crossed us first.” Even as he said it, there was that nagging voice in the back of his head, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, Major.’ It sounded a lot like Rodney.

“I never claimed to be trustworthy. That’s the difference between you and I, Major. I have never pretended to be something I’m not.” That at least was true. Whether it was a mission objective or just plain revenge, Kolya did the job with a minimum amount of flare. In his own twisted way, John admired that. He could do without this surging barely leashed anger, this deep down worry, all these secrets . . . so many secrets. So many masks to wear . . . .

“Fine, Kolya. If we’re being completely open with each other, then we can do away with the evil-villain small talk, and skip straight to the part where I break you and you tell me where Rodney is.”

Kolya just laughed a little. “Go ahead, Major. Try to break me as exquisitely as I have broken you.”

The rage was there again, surging up from the pain and the guilt and the worry. No more masks . . . no more faces. Just him and Kolya and this roaring need . . . the desire he’d always felt to do something crawling up his spine, action, reaction, combined and ready to explode.

John didn’t know when he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them, red clearing from his vision, the cell had grown new restraints. They curled down over Kolya’s belly where John could see white unmarred flesh from where his shirt had ridden up. They wrapped over head and wrists and groin. For a race of uptight zenlike hippies, the Ancients sure knew how to cause pain. Perhaps that, at least, was universal.

“Where’s Rodney?” John growled, low and deep, the restraints humming at the back of his mind, ready for the smallest spike of anger . . . waiting for that razor-sharp hatred . . . the knife blade returning again.

John almost begged Kolya not to answer. The pain in his back had not abated and neither had his fury. It was taking every ounce of self-control to not let go then and there.

“You’re getting off on this, aren’t you?” Kolya said.

The rage exploded, melting everything around it, turning even Kolya’s scream smooth like glass. John didn’t know how long it lasted. All he knew were Kolya’s panting breaths, the way he slumped, dazed, against the wall.

“Did you enjoy that as much as my men are most likely enjoying Dr. McKay?”

Another bolt of anger, wrenched and screaming like Rodney’s face when he looked at John . . . at what Kolya did to him. John let Rodney take over for a second, let that cool look of determination wash the red haze to blue, calm like the ocean of Rodney’s eyes.

When he’d opened his eyes, most of the restraints had retreated. Kolya wasn’t going to talk. He hadn’t even screamed that time. Kolya wouldn’t break . . . not from this. Even as he was looking up at John, eyes gone teary involuntarily, he was still the stronger one.

He still had all the cards. He’d found John’s one weakness . . . his Achilles heel, and until John found his, Kolya would always have the upper hand.

John stepped forward, noticing the patches of red tracing over the dark hair of Kolya’s stomach, much like his own. The edges were like fractals, spreading chaotically into infinity, pain branching out, extending. The one thing they had in common – they were both guilty.

Almost of its own accord, John’s hand stretched out, pushing Kolya’s shirt up, wanting to see more, wanting to trace the edge of the fractal beyond chaos and into anarchy. Kolya’s skin was soft, surprisingly smooth for such a hardened man. John could feel the guilt, familiar, thrumming between them. They were both marked. And maybe they both deserved to suffer.

When John looked up, Kolya was studying him, eyes dark, as dark as John felt.

“You wear pain well, Major. I can see why Dr. McKay enjoys fucking you.”

That was an intimacy Kolya was not allowed. It was John’s secret. He owned it. Kolya had no right to that weakness.

And then . . . he snapped. There was no other way to describe it. The fault lines, the cracks exacted by Kolya and his father and Afghanistan and long months alone in Antarctica – they split. The world heaved. Fault lines slipped down, traced every instant, every weakness. Fault lines – Elizabeth and Teyla far away but still commanding, his mother, still dismissive even on her deathbed, the 32nd airborne division who he left to fight without him, the unequalled joy of the open air . . . Rodney, his one guilty pleasure, breaking him apart.

The restraints returned. They glided up Kolya’s legs, jagged and rough like the dark forest come alive in every true fairy tale. They flipped him over, tore the rough material of his uniform, his protection, away. They bound him tight, splayed him open in the one weakness . . . John could feel it as palpably as he felt his own. Kolya thought he could conquer John. He thought, like so many others, that beauty was weakness . . . that someone like John, with so many faces to wear, wouldn’t be able to put on spite, ruthlessness, an ugliness that no amount of scarring could transform.

If Kolya ever thought, like so many others whose advances John had rejected, that he could dominate him, break him, because he was a pretty thing and a good man, then he was just plain wrong.

Kolya’s thighs were ripe with weakness. He stank of fear, rich like a heady perfume. They were both guilty. There was no justice here, only winners and losers and John was not going to lose this time.

Kolya was silent. He didn’t scream as John thrust into him. He didn’t weep with the blood that spilled as John surged forward, all anger and distance and something unleashed that could not be named. This wasn’t him, fucking Kolya hard and rough in a way that would dig the knife blade in, etch Kolya’s guilt as deep as John’s. This was his anger. This was his power. He owned them, but he was not them. He was not the man taking his enemy so violently. He was a soldier, at war.

Then he was expanding, breaking apart even more, every emotion, every landmass left floating on his rage like islands tossed and turned and mixed, spiraling and dancing on that edge of chaos and anarchy that he longed for until . . . the rage melted away, spilled out of him with a whimper.

And as he panted down from the only orgasm that had left him feeling empty, austere and stripped bare, pieces rearranged in a jumbled mass on the shore of what he thought he was, John pulled away, burned, broken.

“And what will Dr. McKay think about this?” Leave it to Kolya to take away the one person that John knew could put him back together.

The rage didn’t return. It stayed in that cell with those retreating restraints and the man slumped darkly in the corner, neither weeping nor screaming. John walked away as calmly as he could, trying to hide the blood and semen as they mixed, red like the most brilliant of sunsets.

Bates was waiting for him outside, standing at perfect attention. “Major,” he nodded, surely smelling the sex, even handing John a bandana from his field vest to help clean some of the blood still clinging to him. But Bates, always the good soldier, didn’t meet John’s eyes, didn’t make him put any mask back on right now.

“Sergeant.” For once, John was glad to have Bates here. For once, he understood why officers put so much distance between themselves and their men - quarantine. They couldn’t transfer guilt that way.

“Lieutenant Parker came looking for you, Sir. She may have seen some things she shouldn’t.”

There it was again: guilt, the edge of that knife, splitting him still further. Parker . . . small delicate little Parker . . . she wasn’t supposed to have seen that kind of darkness – the kind that could devastate and consume. John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How much?”

“She’s upset, Sir . . . waiting down the hall.”

“Oh god.”

“It’s okay, Sir. That faggot deserved it.”

And now he was so lost he was taking reassurances from Bates. That Kolya had deserved it didn’t make it right.

“She shouldn’t have seen.”

“She won’t tell, Sir. Neither will I.”

Don’t tell . . . just another secret . . . another slice of the blade, cutting deep.