Title: So Very Done
Author: kbk
Rating: um. seven f-bombs, but apart from that it's... PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For the Exhaustion challenge. Posted while not sober. Unfocused.
Summary: Rodney and Radek and John and Elizabeth. Things are not good.

"Basically," says Rodney, "we're fucked."

Elizabeth gasps a little, and John raises an eyebrow, because in all McKay's whining and ranting, he doesn't generally resort to obscenities. Rodney gazes at them with an utterly level expression - the sort that means he's done, so done, "so very done that a lump of char masquerading as a burger would be less done than I am," - and so both of them switch their attention to Radek.

"He's right," says Radek, and Rodney doesn't jump in with a comment about how he's always right. "We're fucked," says Radek, and he shrugs a little when Elizabeth frowns at him.

"Why are we... fucked?" asks Elizabeth. All three men blink, because somehow it sounds worse slipping between perfectly-painted lips in carefully-modulated tones.

"We're fucked," says Rodney, "because that last power surge drained the ZPM."

"Exhausted it entirely," Radek says. "We have tested, and, well, there is not sufficient power to light a candle."

"What about the generators?" John asks, but he isn't holding out much hope, and even the small spark of it flickers out when he sees Rodney's eyes.

"No good," Rodney says flatly. "Burned out. Used up. Empty. Drained. Exhausted. Utterly fucking dead."

Radek leans forward, nudging Rodney with one elbow in a move that's either quelling or comforting. "The generators were still part of the system, as a, a back-up. We did not anticipate... The last power surge, it was exponentially larger than the previous, at least a hundred times greater. There should not have been anything to take so much power."

"There wasn't! It was, we checked, we, it just disappeared, it..." Rodney's unwonted control frays, the pall of depression lifting for a moment to show the man underneath; the man who has been working frantically for days to save the city one more time, who worked through the night before anyone else thought of the power fluctuations as more than a minor irritation, who loves the city more than the Ancients did.

The city is dead.

"If we were on Earth, or most other planets, we could hand-dial with the residual power in the stargate. But our DHD is routed through the main database..." Radek shrugs.

"Which is fucked," says Rodney, as if they hadn't all been there to watch the main screen flicker and die, as though they couldn't hear the silence which used to be underlain by the hum of the city working.

"So," says John. "We're fucked."

The scientists nod. After a moment, so does Elizabeth. John tilts his head in acknowledgement.

"OK. Now what?"

~ende~

AN: obviously they then go off to the mainland and grow crops with the Athosians, and maybe a few years later another ship from Earth (because the Daedalus is gone, or they could just get new gennys) shows up and finds them all tanned and farmer-y and living in communes with babies. but that's a whole other story that I ain't writing. ever.