Chapter Text
Chaque joueur doit accepter les cartes que la vie lui distribue.
Mais une fois qu'il les a en main, lui seul peut décider comment
jouer ses cartes pour gagner la partie.
Each player must accept the cards life deals him.
But once they are in hand, he alone must decide
how to play the cards in order to win the game.
(Attributed to Voltaire.)
* * *
Everett stands at parade rest while Kiva crosses the mess and bends down to whisper something in Rush's ear. He stares at Rush, bound and bent almost double on that damn table, made filthy by what's been happening to him for the last three days. His eyes are open, but he doubts that the poor bastard is taking in Kiva's words or what's going on.
Not anymore.
Rush is never going to be the same again. The man is tough, Everett knows that, knows that he's been through shit that would have shattered most people. Torture by the Nakai, torture by the Alliance.
This is so much worse. Everett takes in the looks on the people standing or sitting in the mess, some of them trying to choke down a bowl of paste. Pity, terror, anger, disgust, horror. The crew can't look away from Rush or one of the Lucians will use their fists on them. Chloe is crying again. Greer has a murderous look on his face. He asked with his eyes and with subtle gestures if Everett would let him take his place in the line to shove his dick inside of Rush, but Everett had shook his head. He was the commander; he had let this situation happen through hesitation and it would be him that paid the price of compliance. He could still do at least that much to protect the crew.
He feels sick with disgust. He doesn't know how he's going to be able to look himself in the mirror anymore without feeling this overwhelming sense of loathing, but it had been better to hurt the man than to see him killed.
They need Rush. They need him to keep the ship running; no one else has the skills he does, in understanding Ancient, in coding and writing programs that interact with Destiny in a way that no one else has managed to do, not even Eli.
He needs Rush.
He needs him to help him take back the ship. Everett is going to be locked up but Rush is going to be free to work and move around the ship, and he's a devious little shit who can outwit his guards.
He needs Rush because they were not done with each other. The fighting, the truces that didn't hold, the way Everett sometimes wanted to put his hands on him and not beat him down. They weren't done with wherever they were going. Rush would look at him sometimes, and Everett would feel his mouth become desert dry, his palms damp, a heavy feeling settling in his groin.
Kiva would have killed Rush, sacrificed him despite his skills, he has no doubts about that, if one of the crew hadn't joined her band of thugs in hurting Rush. She's brutal, and has already proven to have no hesitation in shooting a crew member to make her point. With Rush, forcing him to be raped over and over, the insults, the degradation, the humiliation of knowing all of Destiny's crew was watching him, she wasn't satisfying a kink. She was using psychology like a sledge hammer.
She's made them all complicit in this crime, especially him, since it was his body used as a weapon against a helpless man. She's crushed any thoughts of resistance out of the crew, he can see it in their faces.
No one wants to take a chance on earning Kiva's ire, and finding themselves taking Rush's place on that table. The crew is as broken as Rush is, and that was what Kiva had wanted. Why she'd forced them all to watch Rush's punishment.
Kiva straightens up, slim and straight in her long black leather coat, and she actually is beautiful, if you examine her features, but there is nothing about her that is lovely. She is a warlord, and she's conquered this ship. She's conquered the man who had continued to defy her.
She takes one gloved hand and lifts Rush's head by yanking what's left of his hair upwards. Rush hardly seems to notice. She gazes out at the crew and everyone's attention becomes focused on her immediately.
“People of the Tauri. You will find that I am a reasonable person, as long as my orders are followed. I have generously allowed many of your transgressions to go unpunished, but that generosity ends now. This... man... has been what I believe in your language is called a scapegoat. Your defiance, your disobedience, he has paid the price for that, as well as paying for his own sins.”
I warn you. Do not disobey me, or my lieutenants, or you will find yourselves given justice as this man has been judged.”
For the crime of willfully refusing to work on the dialing problem and causing the deaths of over a hundred of my people; for continuing to lead a rebellion against us; for his willingness to cause unnecessary deaths of both my people and yours, this man was punished.”
I have learned a great deal about this crew, and it is common knowledge that this man took pride in the title he had earned. He will no longer have the name he was given at birth or that title. From now on, his name shall be, 'Kresh'ta.' It means outcast.”
Everett recognizes it. It's Goa'uld. The Alliance planets had been held by the Goa'uld before their downfall; many words had been assimilated by the humans of those planets.
“Kresh'ta will have a place on this ship, granted by my generosity. His skills as a scientist will be utilized, and I give permission to my people to use him as the whore he is if they so wish. I am, however, a merciful commander, and he shall have a month to recover before anyone is to take or touch him.” She directs this at her own people, accompanied with a forbidding stare.
“Colonel Young and the military personnel will be confined together. I intend to use your lives as bargaining chips with your IOA for the release of Alliance prisoners and the removal of your military from our worlds. Disobey me at your peril; you will be treated as Kresh'ta was treated and then either killed or abandoned on a planet. Cooperate, and perhaps a day will come when the military can rejoin the crew; you must prove yourselves worthy first.”
Or more likely, Everett thinks, they might try brainwashing them as they did David.
“The civilian crew and the medic will be allowed to return to their quarters and continue with their assigned duties. However, my people will be monitoring you. There will be guards and our own scientists assigned to the key stations. Obey them, and you shall live. Defy us and suffer the consequences.” Kiva slams Rush's head down on the table in emphasis.
“It is a great honor to be on Destiny, one that I believe most of you did not understand. You have been given a second chance to embrace that honor, and I suggest that you all take it.”
She beckons for TJ to step forward. “After Kresh'ta is taken from here, the civilians are free to go to their quarters or work stations. If you are unsure of your duties, report to Wray.”
Turning her gaze towards Camile, she says, “You are in charge of the work schedules for your people. If you have a problem you may come to me, but I warn you to be brief and precise. Do we have an understanding, Wray?”
Camile straightens her shoulders. “We do.”
“Unchain him,” she orders Varro. “The medic can decide if he's to be taken to his quarters or the infirmary.”
Camile and TJ do what they can to help Rush. The poor guy catches his eye after the chains are off him and the women are massaging his legs and moving his joints. He's back in his body from wherever he had gone to escape in his mind, that's clear. He knows Everett is looking at him and shame shatters his expression. Tears start to roll down Rush's face and he looks so exhausted. He wasn't allowed to sleep much, Everett knows. They'd shock him awake with one of their hellish pain sticks. It was a wonder Rush hadn't broken his own spine from arching up while bent and restrained like that.
He'd seen them smash Rush's head down hard against the table, causing him to black out for a while. Rush had opened his mouth the next time he was told to give a blow job, no hesitation at all.
One of the Alliance's men, Simeon, he thinks he's called, comes up to Rush. Camile tries to stand between them so Rush won't have to look at him, but he shoves her away. “I'll be back for you in a month, Kresh'ta,” he says. “And you know you'll enjoy it. Everyone saw you come all over yourself from being fucked. You liked being treated like a dirty whore, didn't you, sweetheart?”
He reaches out to grab Rush's dick, but TJ moves fast and stops him, her hand compressing his so hard he hears the bones crackle. “Kiva said he had a month to recover. Don't touch him.”
She shoves his hand away and Kiva says evenly, “You would disregard my orders, Simeon?”
Sullenly, he shakes his head and stalks away.
TJ goes back to helping Camile and finally Rush is able to lower his legs, close them. He trembles and whenever one of the women touch him he startles. He is filthy. Semen and piss and blood cover him, from his hair to his feet. Tears have made tracks on his face, and his hands are opening and closing, opening and closing. He is biting his lip and his eyes slide away from Everett's finally and close. He doesn't say anything. Everett's not sure he can make any sounds after all the screaming he had done. He is destroyed, devastated, and Everett is filled with a terrible, terrible pity and anger.
TJ says, “He won't be able to walk.” Everett comes out the trance he'd fallen into and steps forward, unzipping his jacket. “I'll carry him,” he says and pulls it off.
TJ and Camile help Rush to sit up, holding him in position. He obviously doesn't have the strength to do it himself. Everett clumsily fastens the jacket around Rush's waist, tying it tight with the jacket arms.
Varro raises his eyebrows and calls to Kiva, “Young's offered to carry him; I say let him get covered with Rush's dirt, rather than one of us.”
“Agreed,” Kiva says. “Take a detail along.” Her eyes rake him and Rush and she adds, “Our Kresh'ta's own clothes were destroyed and I see that Colonel Young has given his uniform jacket to him. He may keep it as a reminder that the Colonel, his own leader, also fucked him.”
The crudity of the word seems jarring when she says it. Everett grits his teeth. She's probably right, that the comfort he intends for Rush will be perverted into an ongoing torment.
TJ shoots him a look and Camile brushes her hand alongside his own. He gets the message. Don't show how much this is effecting him. Don't react to her words.
He can button it down. And he needs to do something to help Rush.
TJ says, “Take him to the infirmary,” and he nods. He steps closer to Rush, stoops down so that he's at eye level.
It's futile because Rush keeps his eyes closed.
He speaks quietly, hoping that Rush will understand him. “I'm going to touch you, okay? I'm not going to hurt you or do anything to you except carry you.” He clenches his fists, then, a new thought shaking him up; he might be the last person Rush wants to touch him. “But if you don't want me to, shake your head, or tell me 'no.'”
Rush doesn't react. Doesn't shake his head or whisper the word. Everett hopes that it won't make him even more miserable to be handled by one of his rapists, if that is even possible.
Varro is listening and he's frowning. “I suggest you stop talking, Colonel. For your own sake.”
He gets the message. Kiva won't take kindly to his showing any more compassion to Rush. Look at how she'd twisted his gesture to give Rush back some of his dignity. He'll stay quiet for now.
He stands back up, Camile giving him space, and puts his arm around Rush's back. He can feel the terrible tension in the muscles, feel Rush's trembling advance to shaking. “Put your arms around my neck,” he suggests, and he hopes for an argument, a denial that he needs any kind of help, fuck you very much, but Rush just obeys him quickly, even though it obviously hurts him to move his arms so fast.
Swallowing hard because seeing Rush being so compliant has brought home just how much the hell that he's experienced has effected him, Everett slides his arm under Rush's thighs and hefts him up high. Rush opens his eyes in startlement.
The expression on Rush's face as he sees that everyone is looking at him is heartbreaking and he apparently chooses the lesser of two evils because he buries his face in Everett's shoulder.
TJ leads the way. Kiva calls for Wray to join her and with an apologetic look, Wray turns to comply. Everett follows TJ, and Varro and three other men follow him.
They make a strange procession down Destiny's curved corridors; TJ still recovering from the gunshot wound in her upper arm, her belly more full and rounded every new day with his son or daughter. Himself carrying a man he once left for dead, and armed marauders bringing up their six, ready to shoot them all if they say or do the wrong thing.
It has been a week since the Lucians boarded Destiny. Varro told him that Rush had been confined to a room with nothing to eat and very little to drink for several days before he was brought struggling to the mess. He'd kicked and twisted and managed to headbutt one of the Lucians, but he didn't have a chance in hell of saving himself, poor bastard. Guns were held on the rest of them; if he'd yelled for his people to attack they'd have been massacred. Bitterly, he remembered the greater good philosophy Rush espoused and doubted that the man very much cared for it anymore.
Everett and the rest of the crew, civilian and military, were forced to watch as he was finally subdued and held spread-eagled on a table by four men who each outweighed him by probably seventy pounds. His shirts, those grimy T-shirts, were cut off him while a fifth Lucian, an olive-toned woman with her black hair in a high twist and proud of her skills with a knife, apparently, held a blade to Rush's neck. His boots and belt were claimed by two Lucians, and his jeans, which were beginning to fade and fray and wear thin at the knees, were cut into ribbons. His bare legs were streaked with blood from where he'd been nicked by the knife.
Kiva cut his boxers off. Kiva was the first to put her hands on Rush's privates. Kiva ordered him to be bent and chained so that his legs were pulled wide, so he was open and easy to penetrate.
Everett would very much like to choke the life out of Kiva.
He notices that his shoulder is damp and realizes that Rush has been silently crying against him since they left the mess.
“I'm sorry,” he says quietly. He takes a chance that he won't be overheard or if he is, not entirely understood. The Alliance know the man he's carrying as Nicholas Rush, so maybe they don't know the shortened form of his name. “Nick, I'm so god damn sorry about this. I'm sorry I had to do that to you. I figured you'd rather live than die, that's why I did it. So you would live.”
Against him Rush's tears continue to wet his shirt, and he wonders not for the first time if he'd made the right choice.
Maybe Rush preferred to die.
* * *
Before they arrive at the infirmary, Rush's body grows lax, and one arm slides down Everett's chest. The man has fallen asleep. Everett hopes he will be able to stay asleep while he is cleaned up. Rush is a mess, and he stinks. Not only did some of the Lucians empty their bladders on him, Rush had been forced to piss himself, to the catcalls and crude remarks of the Alliance assholes. As if anyone could keep from pissing for three days. Besides, after denying him water until he was desperate for it and willing to not bite the dicks that were thrust into his mouth, they practically drowned him with it, making him swallow so much that his stomach was bloated. Of course he couldn't hold that much for long.
Everett had spent many, many hours watching Rush on kino footage and he knows his expressions. He knows when Rush is lying, he knows when Rush is amused, he knows when Rush is upset. Rush is an open book to him, and what he read on Rush's face when his bladder won the battle of wills he'd been fighting with it was profound humiliation.
It was dark despair he'd seen on Rush's face the times when he became aroused and climaxed. Some of the Lucians had cackled with laughter, and David, damn him, had also brought Rush off. TJ would explain to Rush that just because he'd orgasmed didn't mean he actually enjoyed or consented to the rapes. Bodies could be triggered, Everett knew that. Truth to tell, he was surprised any arousal had occurred since Rush had been in such obvious pain the entire time, but maybe his pain and pleasure nerves had become crossed-wired. It wasn't his fault. Everett would have to check with his people and make sure they all understood that, and when they took the ship back he'd make damn sure the civilians knew it, too.
None of this is Rush's fault. None of it. He'd been doing what he could to regain the ship and save them. Everett regretted blowing up at him, that stupid argument they'd had in the control interface room, as they planned their strategy to defeat the invaders. Rush had only said the truth, that they might have casualties that couldn't be avoided, and Everett hadn't wanted to accept that any of the hostages or any of the civilians or military personnel might die because he hadn't vented the air immediately out of the gate room.
No, what happened to Rush was his fault and he hopes someday that Rush will forgive him for it.
When they enter the infirmary TJ directs him to a gurney hooked up to the bio-scanning Ancient monitors.
He carefully lays Rush down, straightens his arms and legs. Rush stays asleep. His hair was butchered by that little red-headed Lucian girl, and it's a hodge-podge of long and short strands. There is semen in it, and he knows some of the Lucians spit in his hair. TJ brings over a large basin of water and some rags, a spray bottle under her arm.
“It's the same stuff from the showers, just more concentrated,” she explains. She sits down the basin on the bedside table and looks him in the eye. “Sir, I've got this. You don't have to help.”
Glancing at Varro, he can tell the man is in no hurry to escort him back to the storage room turned holding cell. TJ follows his gaze and her expression hardens. Varro had shoved her out of the way when bullets were being sprayed where she'd treated the Lucian wounded. She'd still been hurt, but he'd saved her life. TJ had softened towards him because of that, and Varro is smitten with her. Everett can tell.
Seeing Varro rape Rush had been a gamechanger for her, judging by the expression on her face.
Everett just takes one of the rags from her hands, and says, “I'll clean him up. You've been on your feet way too long, so, go, rest. Unless he needs medical attention first?”
She glances at the reading from the bio-scanners attached to the gurney and shakes her head. “I'll need to check him for tears, maybe do stitches on some of those cuts, clean and bandage others, but it can wait until he's not covered in all of that. If he wakes up, he's probably going to be frantic to be clean again.” Her eyes are sad, and she blinks hard. TJ has always felt for her patients, probably much more than is wise. Rush is no exception. He often has exasperated her, she's told Everett, but when he's been here because of exhaustion and passing out, or from the surgery to remove the Nakai tracker, or from the consequences of sitting in the neural interface chair, she's done her best to take care of him. She'd been so worried about infection from the surgery, concerned his heart was permanently damaged after sitting in the chair.
Taking the spray bottle from her he starts on Rush's torso, spraying the solution and then wiping him clean with a rag. “Go. I'll take care of him.”
She ends up sitting on a gurney across from them. Varro steps close to talk to her but her eyes blaze and he holds up his hands and retreats back to where their guards are watching them, weapons in hand.
He works carefully, methodically, being as gentle and as unobtrusive as he can be as he sets into a rhythm of cleaning and then rinsing out the rags in the water. Rush is bruised, fist sized dark marks and reddish-purple places where hard fingers have held him down, pinched him, damaging skin and muscles.
Everett frees him from the sticky sheen of sweat, blood, dirt, semen, tears, spit, and piss that has covered his front and face. Finally, he gently unties his jacket and removes it. There are several light blankets at the foot of the gurney and he covers up Rush's legs and chest with them. He cleans Rush's genitals and thighs, and moves his legs apart so he can clean between them. His rag comes away with fresh blood, and he takes the remaining clean rag and folds it into a small square and presses it against Rush's anus. He's sure that TJ probably will have to do stitches inside him.
I did that, he thinks bleakly. He'd tried not to think at all while he was fucking Rush, but instead he'd found himself remembering Rush at various times, how his hair had felt under his hand when he'd ruffled it that one time, the way he'd worn his belt slung low on his hips, the way he'd play with a marker, holding it in his mouth while he wrote on the whiteboard back at Incarus.
He'd come inside Rush, and David, busily fucking Rush's mouth and jerking him off, had known. They'd shared a look of acknowledgment, hard men having to do fucking hard things that were distasteful and wrong but necessary. David had to maintain his cover as one of the Lucians. He was Everett's ace in the hole, his secret weapon. David had fucked Rush more than once to prove his credentials and for now, his cover was safe.
He turns Rush onto his side and finishes wiping him clean. He smells only of the herbal scent of the cleaning solution now, except for his hair. Everett covers him with both blankets while he washes the mangled mess. Someone with better hair styling skills than his will have to trim it for Rush.
Rush's skin is badly cut under his beard, and his beard is red with blood despite already wiping him clean once already. He might need to be shaved in order for TJ to treat him, and possibly stitch the cut.
He turns to look at TJ. She's lying down on her side, her feet up on the gurney, but she's watching him, and gets up from the gurney.
She takes over then, examining Rush, rubbing an oil scented with leaves from several planets ago into his skin where the bruises are showing, or she feels the heat of them rising. She bandages some of the cuts, leaving others to heal open to the air. Where the chains had restrained him, the skin is abraded and raw looking. She gently dabs something on the damaged skin and wraps one of her homemade cloth bandages around his thighs and arms.
TJ shaves Rush, who still has not woken up. It's a blessing, Everett thinks, but the rest of what she needs to do is going to be painful and he doubts that Rush can sleep through that.
He needn't have worried because TJ injects him with another of her homemade drugs and while his eyes open for a moment in confusion and incoherence, they close again.
“Colonel,” she says. “You don't have to stay.” She holds a suture kit. He shakes his head. Rush won't know he's here, but he wants to be be present, at least. He slides a hand into one of Rush's.
Rush doesn't grip his hand back, of course. Still, Everett hangs on to him as TJ stitches the ugly cut on his cheek. “I think this was made by a ring, originally,” she says. “It's still oozing blood, it must have been aggravated since it didn't start to heal.”
Dannic's ring probably. He had been next in line after Kiva was through and he'd hit Rush about the head until he was dazed and limp. Everett wishes he could beat the bald-headed bastard down, and he worries for his scientists. From what he'd been told by Rush, Dannic would kill the Lucian Alliance's own scientists if he thought they weren't constantly successful at their duties. He fears for the Science Team and the other scientists in his crew.
They have to retake the ship.
TJ stitches a cut on Rush's thigh, and one on his bicep. Then she lifts the blanket off his legs and says, “Help me scoot him down.” He does so as gently as he can, and Rush is limp and lax still when TJ straps his legs into metal extensions from the gurney. Stirrups, he supposes. Emily called them that when she would mention seeing the doctor. TJ says apologetically, “I have to fasten him into them. Unconscious like this, his legs won't stay otherwise.”
She changes the gloves on her hand for a fresh one, and Everett grips Rush's hand tightly again when she puts her fingers inside of Rush, feeling for the damage. When she pulls them free, they're wet with blood and glistening with other fluids. He shudders a little, and TJ catches that.
“It wasn't your fault, Colonel. You were coerced. That's rape, too.”
“I don't feel like a victim,” he whispers, not wanting Varro and his men to hear him. “I feel like a god damned rapist.”
“You're not, sir,” she whispers back. “She would have killed him, you know she would have. She's a sociopath, not just a woman fighting for her cause, for her people. She's very, very, dangerous. You did it for us, because if you hadn't agreed to join in with the Lucians, she'd have killed him, and she'd have found some way to punish the rest of the crew. Ru-- he'll understand that.”
“Will he?” he asks doubtfully and strokes Rush's hair away from his forehead and eyes. It was always falling in his eyes and Everett's hands usually did itch to push it away, to tidy him up a little. Rush was usually a hot mess, something Chloe had called him once. A hot mess. It had suited Rush, he'd thought at the time, and he frequently tagged him with that term in his head.
Rush would have flayed him alive if he'd ever said it out loud to him.
TJ puts something else into Rush that spreads his internal walls wider. She uses a light so she can see inside him and stitches him up, treats him with an antibiotic ointment. He grips Rush's hand, smaller than his own, his fingers thin and agile. He doesn't care if Varro and his men see him.
Finally, she is done. Quietly she asks him to pick Rush up so she can change the bedding on the gurney.
He scoops Rush back into his arms and she does what she needs to do. “I'm sorry,” he whispers to Rush again, as he places him down on clean sheets and covers him with the blankets.
But Rush doesn't hear him.
Varro takes him back to where the military has been stashed since surrendering, his expression pensive. TJ has given him the cold shoulder again before they left.
Everett thinks he deserves TJ's disdain. Sure, he probably would have been given some sort of punishment, too, if he'd declined that little bonding experience from torturing Rush, but he joined Kiva's crew, worked his way up the ranks. He could have gotten out. The man knows English, he'd been undercover on Earth; he chose to stay with the Alliance.
Everett steps inside the storage area that is filled with his people. Marines, Airmen. Good people, he thinks, as the Alliance soldiers with their weapons step back, and the door cycles closed and locks.
Matthew steps up to him. “Sir,” he says, “How's Rush?”
“Asleep,” he says, but what he means is drugged into unconsciousness.
“Is he okay?” Matthew is a fine young man in most ways, although his handling of his affair with James was botched. Everett lives in a glass house, though, and he won't be throwing any stones.
Greer hears the question and steps closer. James does, too.
“Sir,” Matthew repeats. “Is Rush going to be okay?”
He shakes his head. “I have no idea, Lieutenant. No idea at all.”
* * *