end game (mercy seat)

The city is empty for her taking. She strides through empty corridors, the lights flickering around her, making her smile triumphantly. She stops in front of a door that resists her and her guard is at her side, blowing a hole in the circuits, right through the pretty little coloured walls. This city might have been sacred to some, to her it's no more than the doorway to a better feeding ground. The door slips back and she walks on until they come to the room she has been wanting to see for days. The heart of the resistance. There is death beyond this door. She can taste it.

She nods and another circuit is blown, the door retracting quickly, learning that resistance has no place before her. Inside the room it is dark and musty. She closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of blood and sweat. She shakes her head to snap out of the drunken stupor such aroma induces.

"The chair," her guard announces, advancing forward.

She smiles eagerly, holding up a hand. This is her moment. She lifts her skirts gingerly, to avoid the damp and greasy ground, stepping over nameless bodies and equipment. She climbs the stairs, up to the throne from where the city's last soldier fought.

She looks down at him, his body limp in the chair, eyes open and still. There's a dirty bandage around one wrist, a bloodier one around his thigh. Blood is crusted just under his hair, skin dirty with dried blood on his forehead. His skin is smudged with dust, dirt and blood, his mouth bruised at the corner. She moves in close and breathes him in, the sweat and desperation of those last moments. The fear, so strong and sweet in the air. His hands are still covering the controls of the chair, his mouth slightly open, lips dry. He looks asleep, resting after his long fight. Humans. They fight hard, that much is true. She thinks that maybe this one fought more than this city deserved.

She strokes a finger down his face. It feels warm to her cold blood. "You were never meant to win," she whispers. "How could you?"

The dead man's head flops to the side a little, eyes becoming hooded and mouth curving into a malicious smirk as he looks straight into her eyes. "Don't be so sure," he rasps.

She gasps and steps away in surprise, but recovers quick. Leaning forward again, she smiles, pleased. Even now, he won't admit to being afraid. Fool. "Sheppard."

He smiles back and she can feel how little life there is left in him. She looks him up and down, confused by his smile. There is something angry in there, his smile, his eyes that are bright and oddly coloured. She finds herself looking too long, all those different colours, all the things he has seen. Flecks of sweet and sour emotion.

She reaches out and puts her hand at the base of his throat. "What are you thinking of, human?"

Sheppard's eyes flicker towards her hand and meet hers again. "You lose."

Frowning, she laughs and clamps her hand down hard on his skin, closing her eyes waiting for that rush of heat and energy and taste and emotions. He is strong and his heart pumps furiously to keep the blood flowing. He doesn't even scream. A small gasp of pain, no doubt against his will. She wishes he would scream, blood-filled in her ears, drenching every inch of her soul. This is all the Wraith have, blood lust that feeds every need. If only the humans knew, if only they felt what it was to exist without-

Something lances through her, sharp and white, like a dagger straight through her chest. She opens her eyes and stares down at Sheppard whose eyes are bright white and wide, the chair and platform glowing around him. His hands are clamped down on the chair controls and his face is unmoving, the cuts and bruises vividly dark in the circle of light they're both in. She tries to pull away, but something is binding her to Sheppard.

She's stuck and there is something in her, something worming its way into her head and when it gets there, she hears thousands of screams across this galaxy, thousands of Wraith clutching their heads and falling to their knees. She is unable to do anything but scream, her body held rigidly, the remaining power of the city coursing through her, setting each nerve on fire.

He's burning so bright in front of her, this human, using up his life, using up the city in one last act of vengeance. The screams crescendo in her mind, not just Wraith, but every victim every Wraith has fed upon. Every scream, bubbling in her heart, spilling over and splitting it open. She feels her body ready to fall, not falling only because she is stuck to Sheppard, bound to him in their death.

"No," she whispers with the last Wraith who falls somewhere far away.

The city's power fails loudly, pitching it into sudden silence and darkness. She falls back hard, landing at the base of the chair platform, her mouth tasting her own blood. Her body twitches as she chokes, the remnants of her energy fading as she looks at the man in the chair. His head is turned towards her, his eyes still bright in this terrible darkness where there are no voices left.

"We're even now," he whispers before going still.

She lies on the ground, staring at him through her blurring vision, reaching out to see if there is even one voice left. When her eyes close, she feels his laughter in her chest, tastes something sweet from his mouth and sees a large metal wheel in the golden flecks of his eyes, a wheel that does nothing more than joyously turn again and again.

She suspects the stunned smile on her lips belongs to him too.

- the end -