And Beneath There Was Velvet
Prologue
He had no idea of how long he'd been kept there, inside that foul smelling, dark pit of a cell that held his sanity dangling by a thread, and his soul draining slowly- a little more, day by day.
He could no longer divide day from night, weeks from months, he hadn't the furthest clue what so ever as of why he was kept alive.
He had no recollection of Ronon Dex carrying him through the event horizon, no remembrance of John Sheppard screaming as he crashed on his way to the infirmary. The long hours of sleepless night that followed was lost to him, as were the tired frowns on his friends' faces every time he stirred but didn't regain consciousness.
Slowly he awoke, from what felt like hundred years of deep slumber. He felt distant and strange within his own body, not recognising the nerves tying him together, not understanding the emotions raging through his body.
Head spinning, he slowly tried to focus his gaze on the face hovering above him. A voice with a heavy Scottish accent washed over him like a warm summer breeze, and the stone fell from Rodney McKay's heart. He was home.
Chapter 1 Big News
"Sit down lad, I have something to tell yah."
"No! I refuse! You can't make me!" Rodney McKay had been called to Dr. Beckett's office for "a talk" and now he was looking frantically around for an escape way. There was no way he was to be backed into a corner by this quack and told he was about to die or something equally horrible.
"Rodney..." There it was again, that thick Scottish "You're about to die a horrible death" accent of Beckett's.
"No! I'm not dying! And you're not telling me!" Rodney waved a frantic index finger in Carson's face, a man who was currently staring sheepishly at him.
"Rodney, you're not dying."
"I told you, Carson, I'm NOT dying! So will you please just... Uhm.. Huh?" Rodney stopped mid rant, utter confusion evident on his face.
"I'm not dying?! Then why the hell do you look so serious?!" he screeched, starting to pace vigorously back and forth on the office floor.
"Rodney," Carson told him solemnly: "sit down, please." McKay shot him a stern glare before he continued his pacing; now muttering frantically under his breath. Two firm, but gentle hands placed on his shoulders finally made him stop, and Carson's deep blue eyes finally caught Rodney's attention. Maybe it was something worse than death... What ever it was, this was big!
"As you know I ran a few tests on you a while back, when you... came back to Atlantis," Carson began, as he slowly guided a very confused- looking Rodney down on a chair.
"Yeah, and except from the obvious cuts and bruises and mental gashes after 6 months held captive by the enemy I was in perfect health, so to speak" Rodney continued for him, adding the "so to speak" for some extra padding on his midsection, undoubtedly brought on by the food orgies he'd been having since he got back.
"Well..." Carson hesitated with a deep inhale before he continued: "I did find something. But I couldn't bring my self to tell you..."
"You WHAT?!!" Rodney was back up on his feet in an instant, face flushing with both fury and fear.
"You found something, and you didn't tell me?" Actual tears of frustration appeared in his eyes as he glared at the doctor in disbelief.
"You're supposed to be my friend, Carson!" he whelped, tearing away from the man in front of him who was starting to look more and more distraught.
"Aye, Rodney. That's why I didn' tell yah. I didn' know how to... I couldn't bring my self to..."
"For God's sake, Carson! What could possibly be so terrible you didn't dare to tell me if I'm not dying?!?" Rodney yelled and shoved him away as he once more was trying to place a hand of comfort on his shoulder.
"Now, are you going to tell me what showed up on those scans, or do I have to beat it out of you?!"
___________________________________________________________________________
"Rodney, please," Carson begged, but the wild glare in McKay's eyes shut him up. Carson closed his eyes, inhaled shakily and let the cat out of the bag.
"You're pregnant."
"There," he thought to himself: "let the shit hit the fan..." But the storm of emotions that was Rodney McKay did not happen. In fact, when Carson finally dared to open his eyes again Rodney was just staring at him, dumbly, with a blank expression on his face.
"You are pregnant Rodney. The experiments they conducted on you actually produced a viable foetus." Rodney's gaze darted about the room for a second, before it somehow found Carson, and then vanished straight through him.
"Huh?" was all the astrophysicist was capable of uttering. Carson seized his window of opportunity and seized Rodney once more by the shoulders and guided him gently down on the chair. Rodney just stared dumbly at him with that dozy and confused look he got when he was on the verge of fainting or having a major mental breakdown. Carson sat down opposite him, heart sinking as he looked his best friend sternly in the eye.
"I hate telling you this, Rodney. You've been through hell, and fought your way back, and now I'm going to make things a whole lot more difficult for you. The research the Melonians conducted on you appeared to be reproductive research. By tampering with some of your cells they actually managed to grow what appears to be some kind of fully functional uterus inside you."
Rodney didn't even blink as Carson was telling him this.
"I found this… device in the initial scans I did on you when you were brought back, and we actually tried to remove it surgically, but the organ has grown into a symbioses with your major organs and has fused with your colon. I wouldn't be able to remove it without causing major blood loss and causing permanent damage to many of your internal organs."
There was the smallest of twitch from the corner of Rodney's mouth.
"And then, I discovered an inhabitant in your new organ... A living, breathing foetus. A human foetus, Rodney."
"Human," Rodney breathed.
"As cruel as it may sound, the Melonians were thorough both in their research and their work. They made sure the organ would produce the hormones needed to sustain and grow a foetus to full term, and they even made it possible for the... pregnancy to end naturally..." Carson inhaled a shaky breath before he continued: "...through birth..."
"Birth..." Rodney repeated slowly.
"In fact, the device is so incredible complicated and so in sync with the rest of your internal organs that messing with it any way would be life threatening. Rodney... I can't even believe I'm telling you this, but as a doctor I see no way out of this other than to carry the foetus to term."
"Termination."
The word was barely a whisper, and the only thing that revealed the war of feelings raging inside Rodney was the tiny flickering in his eyes. Carson let out a sigh, heavy with emotion as he continued:
"There seems to be some kind of... organic failsafe programmed into the device. Any attempt to hurt the foetus results in the organ shutting down... and shutting every vital organ in your body down with it. In short: if the foetus dies, you die."
Then Rodney did something that completely flabbergasted Carson Beckett. He sat up, back straight, hands folded neatly in his lap and plastered a smile on his face as his eyes cleared up and he tilted his head to the side.
"It's a damn shame I'm a man then, Carson," he pointed out, quite politely, before a foul grimace entered his face: "since men DON'T HAVE A VAGINA!!!"
Rodney shot up from his chair and charged straight for the poor doctor seated opposite him.
Finally, the panic attack. Carson almost gave a sigh of relief as Rodney's stern hands clamped in a death lock around his throat. A panicking McKay made the world make sense again!
"Calm down, Rodney!" he gasped and tried to pry the raging astrophysicist off his throat.
"CALM DOWN?!?" Rodney screamed and let go of his friend, face now violet with anger: "Are you telling me to calm down?!? Why the hell would I?!" He launched his feet to the floor and ravaged it with a menacing pacing attack, arms flailing as he muttered frantically to himself.
"I'm somehow pregnant, due to the sick experiments by the sick scientists by some sick side branch descending from the Ancients, and I'm supposed to calm down! Hah! And I'm even supposed to carry this abomination to term and give birth without flinching, because: hey, they put a failsafe in me just for fun!"
A horrible mask of realisation dawned on Rodney's face and he whirled round, glaring at Carson who visibly shrunk in front of him.
"Birth, Carson. You said BIRTH!" This time Carson managed to escape the hands shooting out to smother his throat.
"I guess I slept through a few biology classes back in Medical school before I quit, but I think I got the cliff notes!" He gestured rudely downwards to his crotch: "And as it seems I haven't grown a vagina back there in those happy days of captivity I don't see how I'm able to pass anything, let alone a baby through the vagina I don't have!"
Carson plastered a very nervous attempt of a calming smile on his face, knowing only too well it could push his friend even further towards the edge.
"Oh lord..." he stuttered before he continued, very haltingly: "The uterus' cervix has attached itself with the wall of your rectum, turning it to a...uhm, lacking a better term for it, makeshift vagina."
Rodney's eyes rolled, and he dropped to the floor like a ton of bricks.
"That actually went rather well," Carson thought to himself.
__________________________________________________________________________
Rodney woke a few hours later, greeted by the sickening white of the infirmary's ceiling. A pounding headache made him grunt loud enough to summon a nurse, who in turn summoned a very nervous looking Carson Beckett.
"Hi there, Rodney." He gave a little wave as he leaned into view, obviously to make sure Rodney was wake and alert.
"How're you feeling lad?" Blue eyes were laced with concern for his friend's well being.
Rodney swallowed thickly as fragments of pictures and words came rushing back into his mind, the summoning to Beckett's office, the talk... A gasp escaped his throat before Rodney promptly turned to his side and lost the contents of his stomach.
________________________________________________________________________
Later that night Carson Beckett summoned a crisis meeting with Dr. Elizabeth Weir and McKay's team-mates. Rodney was currently held under observation on a secluded room in the infirmary, drugged into oblivion with an alien drug Carson had named Exhimole to help him take the edge off. It was the same vile stuff that had kept Rodney sedated while he was captivated, and the only drug that wouldn't set of the organic failsafe inside Rodney's body. Rodney didn't know the origins of the stuff that was running through his veins, though, and Carson knew that knowledge had to be kept from him.
It broke his heart when Rodney actually had begged for something to calm him down. With a shaking voice he had confessed he was too hysterical to trust himself. And knowing Rodney, Carson wasn't willing to trust him with himself either...
"So he knows," John Sheppard stated with a grim look on his face. Both he and Elizabeth had been informed about Rodney's condition at an early stage, due to their roles as leader of the Atlantis expedition and head of the military fraction stationed there. Both had agreed it was information best kept from Rodney until he had grown a little stronger after the ordeal he'd been through. The way to recovery had already proven to be long and challenging for the socially challenged scientist.
It took him one month to even dare set foot inside his quarters, two to dare a trip to the cafeteria. A grand total of three months were needed before the first quirky smile entered his face and he stated he was fit to go back to work. Then, four months later he was almost acting as his old self again, only plagued with what he believed to be a nasty stomach bug. He'd been nagging Carson about it for two weeks, convinced something was wrong. Given Rodney's medical history of being a tad on the hypochondriac side Carson had managed to keep him at bay for a little while, desperately buying time in hope to find some kind of treatment, some kind of cure he could offer him when the bombshell hit. His quest ended without answers, without a magic treatment that would make the unbelievable go away. Rodney was trapped in a condition he was in no way mentally able to cope with.
"Is there no way to reverse the condition?" Elizabeth asked.
"I've tried all the options I could think of, but the device implanted within him are too bonded with the rest of his body. The organic failsafe instructs the uterus and the rest of Rodney's body to shut down if anything happens to the foetus." Carson sighed:
"And then there's the moral and ethical aspects of the situation. At this state we are now dealing with a twenty weeks old foetus, in a few weeks time it would be able to survive outside the uterus with prenatal help."
"So what, it's unnatural!" John growled: "Rodney didn't want this, it was forced on him!"
"A life is a life," Teyla shot in. "The Athosians believe a new life is a blessing, no matter its origins."
"Does that include new wraith life?" Ronon muttered sarcastically, arms folded sternly across his chest. Teyla shot him a glare that told volumes.
"I'm simply stating that this new life within Rodney didn't choose to be placed there. It can't help its origins," Teyla simply stated. "It's as innocent in all of this as Rodney is."
"It's still unnatural!" John mumbled, stern eyes barely visible under the black mess of hair.
"Well, as it stands now, Rodney has no choice but to carry the baby to term. And we have to be there for him in every way we can," Carson stated politely.
"But what if it turns out to be some kind of foul looking alien thing?" Ronon pointed out, obviously stating what everybody around the table was thinking, but didn't dare ask.
"The baby is completely human," Carson explained: "In fact it's most probably a clone of Rodney. But there's no way to be sure though, until I get to do proper blood tests, and that I won't be able to do before the baby is born."
"Another Rodney McKay," John Sheppard mused: "I think I'd rather take my chances on a foul looking alien thing.."
