Artist: theotherwillow
Titles: Working, Calculations, Victory
Medium: Photomanipulation
Pairing(s): Could be McShep, could be Gen
Notes: Source images for these pictures come from the movie, The Time Machine, and the wings are from rocknro8907's stock on deviantart.

Author: sentientcitizen
Title: This Versatile Genius
Wordcount: ~6,300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Rodney/John
Summary: When he disobeys orders, Major Sheppard is given a dead-end assignment in the tiny scottish village of Durness, home to bitter ex-sapper Mr. McKay. Steampunk AU.
Notes: I did my best with limited time and resources, but I suspect that I got a lot of stuff about the Victorian era very, very wrong, despite my frantic attempts to fact-check. For this, you have my sincere apologies. Feel free to point out any mistakes you ken on to – I’m always game to learn something new. :) Many thanks to my betas sophia_sol and deadedith, who came through heroically at the very last second, and as usual Stargate Atlantis belongs to People Not Me and I’m making no money off this story.












"What is a Sapper? This versatile genius...condensing the whole system of military engineering and all that is useful and practical under one red jacket. He is a man of all work of the Army and the public - astronomer, geologist, surveyor, draughtsman, artist, architect, traveller, explorer, antiquary, mechanic, diver, soldier, and sailor, ready to do anything or go anywhere..."

'History of the Royal Sappers and Miners' by Captain TWC Connolly (1857)

The leaden tick-tock of General Whitlock’s looming grandfather clock seemed almost to echo in the space behind John’s eyes, quite overpowering the scratching of the General’s pen and the faint street noises that came through the tiny window. Sweat trickled down his back as he stood to attention in the musty room. There was little doubt, by his way of thinking, that no matter how absorbed the General seemed in his paperwork, the slightest of fidgets would earn immediate sharp rebuke.

The clock had meandered its way from four of the clock to nearly half the hour before General Whitlock set down his pen with a decisive click and with no further prelude said, “Major Sheppard, you’ve been re-assigned to Durness.”

John blinked. “Durness,” he repeated. He wracked his memory for any recollection of such a place, but could find none.

The General smiled, with just a hint of malice. “It’s a little village in the far north-west of Scotland, Sheppard. You’ll take the train 500-odd miles to Lairg, which is as far as it goes. Luckily for you, I hear they’re building a road in to Durness; you ought to be able to get a coach to take you most of the remaining distance. You may have to walk the last few miles on your own, but of course you’ll have the finest maps this military can provide.”

With the greatest of care, John kept his expression blank. General Whitlock seemed to be relishing the moment, perhaps in the belief that John would be horrified at the revelation. It was, after all, intended as punishment, for while his family had too much influence for John Sheppard to be quietly demoted, there was nothing to prevent him from being blatantly discarded. There must be consequences for disobeyed orders. It was a pity, then, that the General had failed to discuss the matter with John’s regiment, any of whom would have cheerily assured him that Major Sheppard was quite content in utter solitude. Might as well ship ‘im to the pole, sir; I reckon he’d be happiest there.

“When you reach Durness,” the General continued, “You will seek out the residence of Mr. Rodney McKay.” He paused; when his announcement failed to elicit a reaction from John, he continued somewhat irritably: “Formerly Lieutenant Rodney McKay of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Steam Division, and the inventor of the RFS rifle.”

John was unable to prevent his jaw from dropping. “What’s a man like him doing in Durness?” he demanded then, belatedly, added, “Sir.”

The General pushed a file across the table towards John. “That’s what we’d like you to find out, Major Sheppard. Take the file – it should have everything you’ll need to know.”

John stepped forward, and retrieved the item from the General’s desk.

“Mr. McKay,” General Whitlock continued, “may well be the best thing that ever happened to the Empire’s armies. The RFS rifle was the God-sent miracle we needed to win the Boer war, Major. But now our enemies have their own Ruffies, and if we don’t come up with something better, and soon...” the General allowed his sentence to trail off into vague threat. “Even if the man has not a single clever trick remaining, we need him back. It will inspire our people, knowing he once more fights for Queen and country– and more importantly, it will terrify the Boers into inaction.”

John stared at the file in his hand. “So you want me to convince him to re-enlist.”

The General nodded. “But if you can’t, we still need you to figure out what he’s been working on, all these years. I don’t truly believe he’s in Durness for the scenery; the man is working on something, and he wants it kept far away from our prying eyes. If you figure out what it is, your orders are to retrieve it, and bring it back to the Royal Engineering Corps for use in her Majesty’s service.”

John continued to stare down at the file, thinking. It was a simple impossibility that a truly important task, such as the General was attempted to paint this as, would be given to a disgraced major, no matter how impeccable his family’s connection. Nor had he failed to note the lack of a timeline appended to his new assignment. Which meant that Whitlock had no intention for John to succeed. This was not reassignment; rather, Durness was to be his permanent exile, with only a will-o’-the-wisp chance of earning his old position once more.

“Yes, sir,” John said.

“Well, best of luck to you, Major,” said the General with a clench-jawed grin. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine.

It would have been impossible to mistake those parting words for anything but a threat.

* * *

John made good use of his long train ride to admire the scenery, enjoying the feeling of land rushing along beneath him. When at last he tired of this pursuit, he reluctantly retrieved Mr. McKay’s file from his satchel, and began to page through it. It was, he was forced to concede, a quite engaging read, describing a curious combination of a brilliant mind housed within an almost intolerable personality.

Mr. McKay, the file recorded, had adhered himself to the sappers of the steam division at the unusually young age of eleven years, and all initial attempts to return him to his parents had been stymied by the sappers themselves, who recognised a true genius when they laid eyes on one. His personality flaws were, by all accounts, greatly overshadowed by the nearly miraculous things the boy could coax from brass pipes and valves. By the age of sixteen, already accredited with numerous small but brilliant improvements to existing steam-powered weaponry, including some notable steam-clockwork hybridizations, young McKay signed on for a twelve year stint in the army.

His exploits thereafter, including the invention of his infamous Rapid-Firing Steam Rifle, were described in great detail... but nothing in the file could answer for John why a man clearly on his way up had, without ceremony, packed his bags and fled to one of the furthest corners of Scotland the very moment his term of enlistment was up. Nor could it elucidate for him what, exactly, Mr. McKay had been doing in the intervening decade.

It did, however, instil in him something of a desire to shake the man firmly by the hand. The file’s description of his parting words, although notable in its brevity, made it exceptionally clear that Mr. McKay had told Her Majesty’s Army precisely where they could stick their protests. A certain part of John was filled with envy at the very thought.

* * *

John arrived in Durness footsore and exhausted. It took very little time to find a local of whom to enquire after Mr. McKay’s place of residence; it took somewhat longer to find the meaning of the words beneath the women’s thick accent.

The man’s house proved empty. Standing on the back stoop, John’s eye was drawn to the dilapidated-looking old barn that lurked on the edge of the property. With a shrug, the major struck out towards the building. If Mr. McKay was not there, he was uncertain where he would seek the man next. Did a town this small even possess such a thing as a bar? This was Scotland – surely there would be somewhere to drink.

John pushed open the barn’s small side door, and caught his breath. The interior of the barn – and it was a name that hardly suited the building anymore, given how heavily it had been modified from its original purpose – gave lie to its pedestrian exterior. The walls were a jumble of mismatched chalk boards, some reachable only by means of long ladders. Even the topmost boards were covered in densely scrawled equations and diagrams, the purpose of which John could only just barely begin to guess at. Cupboards and racks of tools were nailed up in the scant wall space which the chalkboards failed the cover, and everywhere, in every spare corner, there were books and papers in haphazard piles. Large mechanical devices loomed up amongst a maze of worktables, which in turn were covered in a vast tangle of tools and parts and half-assembled machinery.

Globes of light bobbed on wires above the tables, providing clear and steady illumination to the man who worked diligently below them. Ah – this, then, must be the infamous Mr. McKay.

As if the very thought had alerted Mr. McKay to John’s presence, the man’s head snapped up. He took in John’s uniform with one quick glare and then declared, “No, no, absolutely no! Shoo, go home. No soldiers wanted, thank-you, we’re very peaceful here. Go find something to shoot somewhere else.”

“You have no accent,” John said, with mild surprise. It was the only thing he could think of the say. “Every other soul in this place speaks with a brogue so thick you can hardly understand it, but you have no accent.”

Mr. McKay rolled his eyes. “Please. If the army sent you, then you know my life story. I was eleven when I joined the sappers; I had a hard enough time getting them to take me seriously even without ‘a brogue so thick you can hardly understand it’. I lost it as quick as I could. On the other hand, I gained an extremely impressive vocabulary of curse words in exchange. If you’d care for a demonstration, please do continue distracting me from my work.”

John doubted it was necessary to ask Mr. McKay why he had failed to regain his brogue in the intervening years; that would have required the man to talk to his fellow villagers, and John was rapidly coming to suspect that there were scant few souls in the Durness willing to exchange more than two words at a time with the ex-sapper.

“And yet,” he said mildly instead, “after all that work you chose to throw it away and leave the Corps.”

McKay stilled. “Yes. Well.”

John tilted his head, curious. “May I ask why, Mr. McKay? I understood that you quite enjoyed your time as a sapper.” He supposed there was always a chance that Mr. McKay could yet be persuaded to return to London with him. John had not initially planned to strive after his goal with any particular diligence, but on the other hand, if the alternative proved to be spending the rest of his life trapped in unthinkably close quarters with this embittered ex-sapper... He wondered what General Whitlock would do, should John actually succeed.

“I’m still a sapper,” Mr. McKay snapped. “I just don’t work for you people anymore.”

John blinked. It was difficult for him to imagine why a man so clearly disillusioned with the Corps would cling so fiercely to their name.

As if he could hear John’s thoughts, Mr. McKay added bitterly, “I couldn’t stop being a sapper if I tried.”

It did not escape John’s attention that Mr. McKay had failed to answer his question.

* * *

With the greatest of reluctance, Mr. McKay had eventually stopped ranting on John’s inherent inferiority as a human begin and agreed to put him up for the duration of his stay in Durness. John supposed it would serve as one more point of leverage on the man; he clearly resented the intrusion upon his space. John did not precisely understand why this would be so, however, as the house seemed virtually unlived in. Mr. McKay, despite his grumblings, clearly preferred the convenience of sleeping in his workshop to the comfort of sleeping in his house. By John’s best estimation, the man treated the building as less as a home and more as a place to store the vast stacks of paper that had overflowed the confines of the modified barn.

In the morning, he found himself once more in Mr. McKay’s workshop, where the man now seemed to be studiously ignoring him, perhaps in the hope that if he just pretended John wasn’t there, the major would eventually go away. It was sooner, rather than later, that John grew bored of aimless hovering. The irate ranting of the night before had, at least, been somewhat engaging.

From what he’d read of Mr. McKay, the best possible way to motivate the man was to offer him a challenge. Alternatively, it seemed that merely raising his ire to sufficient levels would also do the trick. John intended to do both. And since stupidity seemed to be the man’s most reliable trigger...

His eyes settled upon the light-globes. Sir Joseph Swann’s new incandescent electric lamps, John guessed, although he’d never had the fortune to lay eyes on one before, and it was beyond his ability to suppose how the sapper could be generating the electricity to run them. “The lights,” he said, the first words either of them had uttered in hours, Mr. McKay’s mumbled curses notwithstanding. “I suppose they operate on the same principle as the Ruffies?”

Mr. McKay’s head jerked up, startled, and he snorted his derision of the statement. “Of course not. Even a tinpot solider like you should know that makes absolutely no sense, Major. The RFS rifle was steam-powered; these lights are electric. When did they promote you, yesterday?”

“When I was eighteen,” John answered, and then wished he hadn’t. He waited with resignation for the sapper to conclude the inevitable. Yes, there it was - the slight curl of the sapper’s lip in a sneer, followed by amused derision. The rank and file would not have realised; but this McKay had a reputation for quick wit. The only way Major Sheppard could have attained his rank at such a young age would be on the strength of a purchased commission, perhaps as near to a mere year before the Caldwell Reforms forbade the process. To then fail to advance in rank on his own merits in the twenty years following, well. Mr. McKay would now have concluded, quite logically, that Major Sheppard was a barely competent officer riding on the reputation of his family.

Feeling somewhat perverse, John slouched ever further, and gave the sapper his most languid grin. “This all appears to be quite simple, for you.”

“Well, yes,” Mr. McKay said, with a sneer. He turned back to his tools, using tiny tweezers to coax some minute bit of clockwork into its correct place. “I am a genius, after all.”

“So why leave the force? Go back. Pull off another miracle. Build a weapon. God knows we need one.” There – a challenge, albeit something of a weak one.

McKay barked a laugh. “No, thank-you. I think not.”

“We are at war,” John felt obliged to point out.

Mr. McKay snorted. “Please. Minor skirmishes.”

“Maybe not for long,” John said. “The Boers...”

“Yes, yes, the Boers,” Mr. McKay snapped. “We defeated them, Major. With my RFS rifles.”

John pounced. “Yes, the Ruffies. It’s been over a decade since you created them, Mr. McKay. Do you really think the Boers have failed to duplicate your designs? Our armies lack their previous military advantage. Any war with the Boers will result in great death.”

Mr. McKay’s mouth slanted unhappily downward. “I know.” He turned back to his workbench in silence.

John paused, considering. This was uncharacteristic of the Mr. McKay that the file had led him to expect; the man should have risen up with biting wit and renewed drive. Instead, John’s words seemed to have driven him into some fresh depression.

“Do you care nothing for the lives of the Empire’s soldiers?” he tried.

That seemed to do it. Mr. McKay’s eyes flashed in anger. “Have you heard of the battle of Doranda, Major Sheppard?” he asked, bitingly.

John blinked, taken somewhat aback. “I was at the battle of Doranda,” he replied, after a mere moment’s hesitation. For the first time since the invention of the Ruffies, the British army had faced an enemy as well-armed as they themselves were. The field of combat had been drench with blood; the death-toll on both sides, nigh unthinkable. John had returned home with very near one in six of the men he had marched out with.

“Oh.” Now it was Mr. McKay who seemed taken aback. But he rallied, “And do you think, then, that anything I might invent for your precious army will do more than make things worse? Suppose I create something even worse than the RFS rifle, Major. Something even better at killing. How long until the enemies of the crown duplicate it, too? How long until you and your fellow officers walk away from the field of battle with a tenth of their men alive? A hundredth? Or none at all.”

John had no answer for the man.

* * *

It was a great boon to John and the state of his sanity when he realised, one morning several weeks into his sojourn with the irate Mr. McKay, that the slightest of prodding could prolong the sapper’s rants far past their natural conclusion. So long as he avoided the subject of the RFS Rifles and Mr. McKay’s term with the army, careful interruptions and crafted stupidity could string the man along almost indefinitely.

It was, perhaps, poor sport. But it was the only entertainment to be had in Durness, barring the nightly gatherings at Durness’s local tavern, where John could at least nurse an ale and try to decipher the local brogue. Solitude had grown less appealing now that John found his days lacking the mindless drills and duties he had grown so accustomed to. Such emptiness of time led to thinking things John would rather leave unthought, and one could only occupy so many hours a day with good brisk turns about the village. It being thoroughly Mr. McKay’s fault that John found himself in such a situation, the major felt it to be a sort of justice that the man’s ranting should entertain him.

Besides, he was fairly certain that on some level, the sapper enjoyed their verbal sallying near as much as John did. There grew in John a sense that the solitary Mr. McKay was not, by his nature, a solitary man. He seemed to draw a great and smug satisfaction from belittling John’s intellect, his bearing, and his hair. As to John, after the first few days he found himself most unable to muster up the proper indignation at the insults. One simply could not view Mr. McKay’s ire with a serious eye.

Almost against his will, John found the man intriguing.

Perhaps that was why, nearly a month into his exile, John Sheppard erred. Mr. McKay was in fine form, ranting upon John’s ignorance of the basic principles of flight and simple steam equations and for God’s sake you’d think the army would have insisted he brush his hair once and a while and John, laughing, found himself so caught up in the moment that he unexpectedly forgot to play the fool.

“Actually,” he heard himself say, too late to stop himself, “if those numbers are right, you just need to add an extra pressure valve to the third pipe and that should solve your timing issue.”

“Well, sure,” Mr. McKay snapped back, “if you wanted it to... uh...” The sapper paused, and looked back at the chaotic jumble of parts laid out before him. He looked back at the major; than at his parts again. Muttering to himself, he snagged a spare bit of paper and spent several long minutes scrawling strings of numbers and letters, grumbling under his breath and John looked on, bemused. At long last, Mr. McKay’s head snapped up. “You!” he demanded. “8,191 – prime or not prime?”

“Uh... prime, I’m fairly certain,” John answered, confused.

“Fifty-fifty odds. Why was Hero of Alexandria’s aeoliphile deeply and stupidly flawed?”

John tried to picture an aeoliphile, feeling pinned in place by McKay’s intense gaze. He’d studied the Pneumatica with his tutor when he was a child, but they’d never really questioned the basic principles; calling Hero’s ideas stupid was a bit like accusing Aristotle of being derivative. “Well, uh. It sends scalding hot steam out in every direction... I suppose it’s dangerous. And it’s almost impossible to capture the secondary force of the expelled steam without losing most of the available energy. Wasteful.”

“And if you were to counter-warp a fifteen gauge cog within a steam-exhaust relief pipe in an attempt to create an etheric cascade from the initial reaction, what sort of power output could you expect?”

“Mr. McKay,” John managed, “I’m fairly certain that what you just said was complete and utter gibberish.”

“Hmm.” Mr. McKay glared at him. “You’re... not entirely stupid. Have you ever worked with brass?”

John blinked at the sudden change of pace. “No?”

“Well, then get over here.” When John looked confused, Mr. McKay impatiently explained, “I’m going to teach you, obviously. It looks like you might not be as utterly inept as I thought, so as long as you’re hanging around taking up my time, you might as well be useful.”

All things considered, John suspected that this was the highest compliment he would ever receive from the man. With a grin, he took up the tools as Mr. McKay directed.

* * *

It was becoming clear to John, as time passed inexorably onwards, that the seeming chaos of Mr. McKays workshop was in fact a sort of carefully choreographed dance. There was reason behind the madness of it all; the major was certain that all the disparate pieces Mr. McKay tinkered with were meant to come together in some greater whole. But to his frustration, he found himself unable to guess what, exactly, that greater whole might entail.

Mr. McKay himself was little help. For a man with such a love for the sound of his own voice, the sapper could be stubbornly reticent when he wished it. John suspected that the seeming carelessness with which his work was strewn about the barn was in fact a deliberate plot to baffle anyone attempting to discover his end goal.

It could only be a matter of time before the pieces had to start to come together, though, and Mr. McKay seemed to know that. He grew agitated, more secretive than before. Several times, John caught the sapper hastily clearing away plans and sketched when he saw John approaching. John, for his part, pretended not to notice.

It was late in the afternoon, with autumn sunlight catching the dusty air of the barn and turning it to swirling gold, when a hesitant Mr. McKay approached John, a large roll of paper clutched in his arms.

John waited for him to speak.

“So, uh...” Mr. McKay shuffled uneasily from foot to food. “I’ll be adding the pistons tomorrow, and at which point it’s going to become so brutally obvious what I’m making that even you should be able to figure it out, so...” with a shrug, he unrolled the blueprints and smoothed them out on the table.

John leaned in to examine them, frowning. What... ah. He’d misheard. Not pistons - pinions. His breath caught in his throat.

“I’ll always be a sapper,” Mr. McKay said simply. “But now, I get to choose what I build. So instead of weapons, I choose these. Will you help me?”

Wings. Mr. McKay was building mechanical wings. “They’re to be... worn,” John confirmed.

“Obviously.” The ‘idiot’ was implied by the roll of the sapper’s eyes.

Flying men. And some deep, treacherous part of John whispered, flying soldiers. If he wanted, these wings could be his ticket home. If he wanted.

Did he want?

“I’ll help,” John said.

* * *

The wings whirred frantically. Slowly, ponderously, the sack rose from the ground. It reached the end of its makeshift tether, and hovered there for a moment, straining at the rope. Then the clockwork, which Mr. McKay had given only two winds of the key, stuttered to a stop, dropping flour-sack and wings into John’s waiting arms.

“It worked!”

“Of course it worked,” Mr. McKay snapped. “It was my design. Well. You helped, a little.” But in his own disgruntled way, the sapper looked nearly as thrilled as John himself felt.

And John was thrilled, beyond that which he could ever previously recall being. He laughed, giddy with the pleasure of success and the sudden bounds to which his staid imagination had leapt. Flying men – the world should soon have flying men, who would soar far beyond the confines of earth. John found himself dizzy, overcome with some great inner joy at the mere thought.

“This calls for a celebration,” he declared, unstrapping the wings and setting them carefully, almost reverently, on the nearest workbench. “I have unopened in my luggage a bottle of very fine whiskey which my men purchased for me upon receiving the news of my re-assignment. I assume you are no teetotaler, to eschew strong drink?”

“Please,” said Mr. McKay, with a snort. “I’m Scottish. What you call strong, I call ditchwater.”

* * *

It was evident to John that Mr. McKay had greatly exaggerated his ability to hold his drink.

“...and the subsequent explosion destroyed the entire facility, and that,” the sapper concluded his rant, “is why only complete and utter idiots believe that ether could even conceivably be a real thing in any universe with even the slightest resemblance to reality, and why you should never trust a girl with an ambiguously-gendered name.” The entire rant, which had been among Mr. McKay’s less coherent, had been punctured by the dips and bobs of a socket wrench, wielded like a conductors baton.

“What we need,” said John, aware in a distant sort of way that the world around him seemed to be lilting slightly off to the left, “is music. It is hardly a celebration without music.”

“And where d’ye expect to get that from?” Mr. McKay demanded, looking irritated. John was most amused to note that under the influence of nearly half a bottle of whiskey, as when he was at his most irate, the merest hint of Mr. McKay’s former brogue began to reappear in the man’s words.

He was, in fact, perhaps excessively amused. It occurred to him, through the alcoholic haze, that had he not been somewhat worse for the drink himself, he would most likely not have found Mr. McKay’s slight hint of Scottish cadence so very amusing as to attempt to egg the man on by suggesting, deadpan: “If you like, I could sing.”

“No.”

“You sing, then,” John said, trying not to laugh. Well. In honesty, trying not to giggle.

“No. No, no, no, absolutely not. There shall be no music from the genius sapper,” Mr. McKay insisted, flailing the wrench dangerously close to several delicate bits of gearwork. “Not unless you have a piano hidden in that wild mane of yours.”

“You play the piano?” John asked, surprised.

Mr. McKay set the wrench down with a clunk. The silence stretched on, and even in his muzzy state John sensed that the feel of their little celebration had somehow changed. When Mr. McKay finally spoke, he sounded shy, almost hesitant, and most unlike the sharp-tongued man that John had come to expect.

“I used to,” Mr. McKay said. “When I was younger. My mother had pretensions of grandeur, you see. Moved us all to London and set about making Jeannie and I into little gentlefolk. Thought we’d marry up. I didn’t care for most of the lessons our tutors set to us, but I quite liked the piano. I got it into my head that perhaps I’d be a musician when I was old. Mother wouldn’t stand for that, of course – not very respectable, to earn a living from your music. My tutor sided with her; told me I was very technically skilled, but I had no art in my soul. I would never play well enough to do more than impress the ladies in my parlour.” He fell silent.

“What then?” John asked.

McKay snorted, and the sound seemed to break him from his reverie. “Then I ran away to join the sappers, of course. It was clear I was ne’er going to be a particularly good gentleman, and I’d be damned if I was going t’live my life as ‘good enough’.”

Some part of John felt that such a confession should be matched by one of equal value. He sought desperately for some secret fact with which to balance the scales.

“It is entirely possible that my father never loved me.”

The sapper stared at him. John began to suspect he had miscalculated.

“...Mr. McKay?”

“Oh, hell,” Mr. McKay sighed. “At this point, Major, you really might as well just call me Rodney.”

* * *

Years later, John would still find himself able to close his eyes and see, in vivid detail, the moment just before the second test of the wings went horribly awry. In his mind’s eye, the scene is a frozen in time, one perfect moment of Rodney poised against the brilliant blue sky; the sun gleaming off brass and fracturing through crystalline feathers; the plume of white steam, spiraling upwards. The next few minutes come in fragments:

The sudden, wrenching screech of a bursting pipe; the hiss of scalding steam as counterpoint to Rodney’s shrill scream; the hollow thud of the sapper’s body impacting the outer wall of the barn.

The iron tang of blood in his mouth; the frantic sound of his own voice, shouting words he can no longer recall; the grass, still dew-slippery beneath his feet.

Tearing the wings away, not caring where they land; frantically trying to keep his grip as he drags the thrashing body of his friend across the yard; the rough rasp of stone against his hands as he scrabbles for cold water from the well.

Clean white linen bandages against the sickening red of burns; Rodney’s moans of pain; the frantic, unhappy feeling of knowing there’s nothing more to be done.

The realisation that flying soldiers would hurt Rodney more than a burst pipe ever could.

Bone-deep exhaustion.

Sleep.

* * *

One of the globes of light that dangled above Rodney’s workbenches had ceased to work. Mechanically, he unscrewed the metal socket which the glass rested within, and removed the mechanical interior, which came out with a pop that seemed too loud in the silent workshop– the bulb had been vacuum sealed. He wondered if Rodney had a way to reseal it. He found he didn’t really care, so long as the task kept his hands busy.

The workshop, lacking Rodney’s loud presence, seemed too silent by far.

Examining the mechanics of the device, he found that a narrow filament, stretched from one post to another, had split in two. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be a narrow strand of wire. Had he been asked, John would have said that he dimly recalled Sir Joseph Swann’s lamps having contained a carbon filament of some form; but he supposed Rodney had been making improvements.

With delicate tools, he carefully detangled the filament from its posts and began systematically rummaging through the piles. In time, he found a bit of wire he thought might work, and jury-rigged it back in place as best he could. With care, he re-assembled the entire rig, and screwed it back into place... only to have utterly nothing happen as a result.

“I knew you couldn’t have really thought they worked on steam power,” Rodney croaked from the doorway. There he stood, looking weak and yet utterly himself, as he scowled in at John. “Also, you’re very lucky you didn’t just electrocute yourself or burn the whole place down. I have no idea what you put in there, but clearly it’s not working. And also you have to fill the globes with inert gas before they’re safe to use. Basically you’re a complete idiot.”

But there was no venom in his voice, just a sort of amused tolerance, and John grinned back at him. “It’s good to see you on your feet again, Rodney.”

“Yes, well.” The sapper stomped determinedly over to one of his ladders and began hauling himself up it. “Work to be done. Now get that bloody bulb back down before it explodes and kills us all.”

John obeyed. “Should you really be climbing that?” he asked, mildly

“No,” Rodney hissed, angry. “But you can’t do these equations and you can’t fly the damnable wings and you – you-” the man’s head snapped around so fast that for a moment, John truly feared the sapper would tumble from his perch. His heart leapt in his chest, and then Rodney shouted – “You! Take your shirt off!”

There was a long silence. “I say, what?” John asked, eventually.

“Off! Now!”

Bemused, John obeyed. As the fabric slipped off over his shoulders, a strange sort of feeling came over him. Under Rodney’s minute examination, he found that felt more naked than the loss of a mere shirt should entail. He was used to the sapper’s eccentricities. So why should this particular request make him feel so odd?

“Yes,” breathed Rodney. “Yes, this could work. You have more muscle, of course, too many days doing drills in mud up to your neck, I suppose, but I’m broader in the shoulders so... just a few modifications...”

“Rodney,” said John, clutching awkwardly at his shirt. “Rodney. What are you talking about?”

“The wings, the wings!” he snapped, gesturing dramatically. The ladder wobbled, and John rushed over the steady it. “I’m talking about the wings,” Rodney continued, peering down at him. “What, did you really want to wait until I’ve healed to make another test flight?”

John’s heart leapt, thought he couldn’t quite have said why. “You mean...”

“Yes, of course I mean! We’ll modify them to you fit you. You, Major John Sheppard,” said Rodney, pointing down at him, “are going to fly.”

* * *

John shifted, revelling in the feeling of the wings on his back. The upgraded attachment system, completely lacking in the thick leather straps that had graced their early prototypes, created an illusion of unity between him and the machine. It had unsettled him, at first; now he found himself incapable of imagining the wings any other way.

He was restless, almost ready to leap from the table and take flight, then and there. Each twitch of his impatient body brought an answered chime from the crystalline feathers of the wings, which moved with him so naturally that he hardly even had to think; at times it felts as if he simply desired an action and it occurred, no more complicated than extending his hand to grasp a wrench.

“Stop that,” said Rodney absently, reaching out a rand to rest on John’s shoulder. The sapper’s rough palm was warm against John’s skin; the barn was too cold, this time of year, for any real comfort to be achieved with this much flesh bared to the air. But it remained too risky, at this juncture, to have the loose fabric of a shirt anywhere near the wings’ delicate moving parts. “I mean it, calm down.”

John took a deep breath, and let his world narrow down the heat of Rodney’s skin against his. The wings stilled their restless fluttering.

“Extend them,” Rodney ordered. John obeyed. “And now fold... all smooth. Right.” The sapper took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with, before I realise how utterly insane the both of us are.”

* * *

Flying was freedom in a way that John had never dreamed it could be. Somewhere below him, Rodney was red-faced and ranting, a note of panic in his voice; John, executing a neat roll and then a gut-wrenching dive, which he pulled out of with a neat snap of the wings, could hardly stop laughing. He could fly – he could fly. Was there anything in the world that was impossible, now? Anything that he and Rodney couldn’t do?

In that moment he thought he loved Rodney, a little, for giving this gift to him.

The wings chimed – the clockwork components were running down. Reluctantly, John turned, and swooped down for a landing, trying not to be too disappointed. The springs weren’t even a quarter wound, not for a test flight. Next time, his flight would last much longer.

He landed, out of breath and the ground feeling disappointingly solid beneath his feet, as Rodney railed at him. The words flowed over John, almost unimportant compared to the fear and joy and envy and pride all warring in the tone of the sapper’s voice.

“...and infinitely more idiotic than I had ever previously anticipated!” Rodney ranted, waving his hands excitedly. “You could have been killed!”

“Huh,” said John after a moment, his tone faintly admiring. “You do have quite the impressive vocabulary of curse words. I admit, I thought you were exaggerating.”

As he stood there, grinning at the spluttering sapper, it occurred to John for the last time that the wings represented his final chance at returning to the life he had once known. If he simply flew away now, Rodney could never stop him. John could build more. A whole army of flying soldiers, with him at their head. Now there was a vision.

On the other hand, given the choice between returning to the army with all due pomp and circumstance, lauded as a hero of the empire, or staying here to spend the rest of his life with his sarcastic genius of a sapper.... well.

“Hey, Rodney,” said John, his grin growing yet wider, “How long do you think it’ll take us to build your pair?”