After a week of running, a constant panic attack clenching his throat shut and making that whole running thing harder than it should have been, after seven days of exposure to the elements (two days of skull-splitting storm, and he wasn't sure he'd regained his hearing yet) and five nights of napping between bursts of terror, Rodney is actually relieved to be dropped in a nice, dark cell. He lays flat on his back, limbs askew, and closes his eyes. Just for a minute, to shut out the angry yelling and clanging and assorted other prison noises. The stone under the back of his head is cool, dryer than anything he's touched for one hundred eleven hours (give or take, it's a nice number) and he falls asleep without meaning to.
He wakes in what feels like minutes to a damp cloth on his cheeks, pain blooming dull in his skin, and he fights off waves of disorientation and nausea to look around. The ceiling is the first thing he sees, and just that simple fact - oh hey, a roof, been a while - reminds him of the bars on the window in his door and that no one else was in here when they brought him in. He thinks.
He blinks slowly and remembers to look at the other person, still with the cloth and the dabbing at his cheeks. He tries to say something, but his voice crackles once and goes quiet.
"I am the healer," the young man that looks a little like Sheppard around the hair says, not pretending to smile. "Lie still. You are ill, and movement will give you pain and make the warriors at your door nervous." He brushes back Rodney's hair with startlingly gentle fingers, picking leaves and twigs out of the strands.
They go through the motions of care, Rodney sucking clean water greedily from the rag, tasting his own sweat on it with each unsatisfying mouthful. He's stripped and drenched and rubbed clean, and the guards ignore the glares from the shaman or doctor or whatever and take Rodney's clothes and don't give him anything else to wear. He can tell by the set of the other man's jaw that there will probably be clean clothes later, regardless of what the military in this place has decided. That comforts him a bit, a little like home.
The healer leaves at some point - Rodney's fairly sure he fell asleep again and doesn't really blame himself. He hasn't eaten much lately, and his hands have gone past shaking and out the other side into unresponsiveness. He thinks longingly of the salt-bitter cloth and the clear, cold water so casually wasted on his skin, and then he starts making escape plans.
They come for him just as he's settled down to work at the edges of the door (no frame to pry apart, hinges on the other side, but he'd find a way, the door was the weakest part of any room) and unknowingly help him mark exits and memorize guard posts. He catches a cutting slice of sunlight through a quickly-closed hatch in the ceiling of a dead end, and he thinks nonsensically, Genii. Underground bunkers, of course, and next they'd get out the nuclear devices and ensure he was entirely uncapable of passing on his sterling genetics through anything short of cloning.
They get out a camera instead, dirty and standard-issue with "Sony" on the side under a thin layer of oily residue. It's on the floor, and he briefly wonders why they want to videotape his feet, and then they shove him to his knees and he thinks, ah. He starts grinning, all teeth and wide eyes taking in the two exits and five soldiers and one officer pacing in a slow circle around him and he wonders if they actually turned the camera on.
One guard toes it, bringing up a red light, and there goes that theory. Smarter than the average monkey, then.
He realizes he's staring at the expressionless lens with a seriously fucked grin on his face and a prime view of his penis, and he realizes that this video is going straight back to Atlantis possibly at this very second, and he realizes that the liquid running down his cheeks is a mixture of plasma and blood from the sores of his sunburn, and he starts to shake. He isn't sure if he's laughing or crying until the officer forces his chin up with a crop (a fucking crop, they have riding crops in the Pegasus galaxy, there aren't even real horses in the Pegasus galaxy) and he's still grinning teeth.
No one says anything the entire time, or if they do he can't hear it over the roaring in his ears of his heart after the first blow to the head. He stays on his knees, nice and obedient, legs splayed out until his balls curl up from the floor. They knock him over and he gets up, each time slower than before, carefully feeling out each new bruise and cut. They stop when a misplaced blow to his gut brings up thin bile and a bright thread of blood, slowly dyeing the wet splatter pink. He stares at it for a long time before the understanding that they're done seeps in, and he looks up at the camera again, looks right into the unfeeling stare of the lens. He's not sure if he should wave (hands tied behind his back, right) or smile (his face feels broken, ugly and painful from exposure and two quick, professional blows meant to stun) or maybe symbolically bite through his tongue (but the whole point of this indignity is to be rescued at the end) and in the end he doesn't do anything before they drag him off.
There's a long shirt, pretty much a dress, waiting in his cell. A bowl of water and a cloth as well, but he doesn't waste it on cleaning himself for the second time in one day, just cradles it in his unbroken arm and sips now and then, when his stomach can take it. It doesn't taste like sweat, but his mouth tastes like blood and that's close enough.
He sleeps for a long time, some indeterminate length of time, and he dozes for longer - the healer comes and goes, the frown line between his brows worse each time, and when the guards come for him again the healer is with them with arms folded sternly. Rodney grins and laughs silently, shoulders shaking so badly they have to carry him by his upper arms until the doctor makes noises about dislocation.
He's stripped in the interrogation room, which isn't exactly hard or a surprise. He goes limp this time, makes them work for it, flops onto his back to protect his kidneys and rolls with the blows. He kicks the camera when they knock him close enough, and there's swearing and shouting and a lot of dizzyness after that. He ends up held on his knees, arms twisted behind his back, and the camera held about a foot in front of his face. He wonders if Carson is checking his pupils for signs of concussion, starts giggling silently, and decides that's probably a yes on the concussion.
The officer is still talking, making threatening noises that mean absolutely nothing, and Rodney rolls his eyes and makes a talking hand motion behind his back where unfortunately the camera can't see. The officer can, though, and the crop descends with enough force to bring a sharp, wet line across Rodney's cheek and he thinks vague thoughts about head wounds bleeding a lot as the doctor shrieks obscenities and nearly breaks the camera getting the officer away from Rodney. He wonders why that was the objectionable thing, the last straw, thinks about that long and hard before he falls unconscious.
The next day (he thinks it's a day, he's really bad at determining time without a clock or at least a sun) is long. He laps at his water, wonders if he can curl his tongue like a cat, tries until he can, examines the new bandages, stretches sore muscles and stiff skin, works at the door until the guards change shifts, thinks about power flow and effective communication channels, considers waste management as a hobby, decides to make it Kavanagh's hobby instead, plots to raid Zelenka's stash of pens, almost blacks out checking to make sure his arm was set while he'd been passed out in a manly fashion, chases two mice and finds a possible weakness in the wall he'd overlooked in his earlier disorientation, and by the time they come for him he's relieved. He'd been about to start gnawing on his fingers so he'd have something to write with to get the damn equations out of his head.
The officer (same officer every time, the guy needs a hobby, maybe he likes waste management?) seems a little thrown by Rodney's friendly nod, has him stripped and shoved to his knees anyway. The floor is colder than usual, so perversely Rodney wriggles down lower, refusing to show the discomfort they expect. His broken arm, bound behind his back, is a fire-dull burst of pain that starts anew every goddamn second. He smiles cheerfully at the camera, holds in the urge to lick his lips nervously. Waste of water, he doesn't know when he'll get water again for sure.
The doctor comes in late, clearly even more pissed off than yesterday, and Rodney gets the idea he wasn't exactly invited this time. He stands within view of the camera, the genius, beautiful man, scowling darkly at the officer the entire time as he paces circles around Rodney, whip tapping the hard leather of his boot with every step. It's a new whip, long and shiny and darker at the end than it is at the handle. Rodney can't hold in his curiosity, has to know - he leans over as the man passes his left, touches his tongue to the loose fall of the tip and yeah, that leather hasn't been near a horse since the animal died to make it - it tastes of oil and blood and human sweat.
The officer's stopped, looking down at him with a frightening intensity, and it's right about then he realizes that he's just taken this whole thing to a level he really didn't want to go to, and then he realizes that fear is not a good look for himself right now and he's just given these people what might be the key to breaking him. He knows just as abruptly that if his Colonel is watching this, he knows it too, and that's almost as horrible.
That session ends normally, a broken finger and a long gash up the sole of his right foot, and he practises walking on it until he's sure he can escape despite it, and then he washes the blood off the floor with his precious water so no one else will know he can do it. He spends some time prying at the mousehole, getting a few bites for his troubles, and decides that what he really needs is a bedroll and room service.
They come for him early, just as he's settling down to run inventory of his injuries. The guards that fetch him are white-lipped, reluctant and scared and ill, and that makes him more nervous than he already was.
They put him in a room alone with the man and the camera, all the guards carefully outside the room with the doors shut but not locked. Rodney knows better than to think they're gone, or that he has a chance of escaping - the apparent carelessnessonly means increased security, he knows that, but it's still a chance for something.
They start off with expert lashes across his back, which Rodney had expected with resignation, but when the red-dripping leather is shoved into his mouth he tries to scream, feeling something in his throat tear with a tiny spark of pain, tries to bite fingers muffled by leather gloves, tries to blink back tears and hold back his gag reflex and keep himself from shaking. He doesn't succeed at any of it, although he does manage not to choke on his own vomit, even though he has to lick it off the whip and boots and floor. He doesn't make his tongue do the cat-curl, punishes himself for being so goddamn weak by lapping up his bile with a flat tongue, tasting every square surface inch. He doesn't look at the camera, not even when the thick curl of the whip pushes his face in that direction, looks anywhere but at the camera, anywhere but at Atlantis.
That isn't the worst of it, but he blanks out blissfully, like drinking too much and forgetting how much embarassment you caused yourself. He comes back to himself in his cell, not sure how long it's been or what happened, and the doctor doesn't come to see him. He carefully presses fingers against his ass and there's a blissful lack of pain, relief tangible in the absence of blood. The crop-cut on his face is bleeding again, but he ignores it and focuses on swallowing water instead.
There's no recording at the regular time, to his relief, and he spends the time considering nutrition. He's given a hunk of bread the size of his fist, and that makes him realize that he should be dead by now - no solid food in days, and yet he's not weakening from starvation. There must be something in the water, and he longs to determine if it's an additive or natural properties, to bring samples to Atlantis to delegate to someone else. He lets the bread soak before he even thinks about eating it, and it's a good thing he only put half the stuff in his bowl because it's all he can do to eat that much. He saves the rest for later and busies himself thinking of ways to keep it from the mice in a perfectly blank room. He ends up shoving little pieces into his cheek until they dissolve in his saliva, eating without adding anything to his stomach, and finally gives the last crumbs to the mice anyway. They nip his fingers more than usual when he works at their hole, but he can't get too angry. It was pretty good bread.
The doctor is back the next day with a tiny flashlight he recognizes from his own pack. There's a thorough examination of his mouth, but when the man presses fingers against his Adam's apple and orders him to hum, he just blinks instead. The pressure hurts distantly, less than his arm or fingers or foot or back or ribs or face, but he knows it might be worse because he needs his voice. The rest can get better, will get better, but he needs his voice. Atlantis needs his voice.
The next recording session, he tries to give them what they want, tries to break and scream and beg, but all he can do is move his lips until the officer looks at him posessively and orders everyone else out. The guards are startled and unsure but they go, don't want to stay or listen or be anywhere near this room, and that's when Rodney realizes this is his chance. No increased security, just a confident man who walks too close.
Rodney doesn't try to mask the thud as he trips him, just rolls onto him and bites down because he has no other weapons and his sparring sessions never got to where he could snap a neck with his thighs like Teyla. The wet choked noises under his teeth keep his eyes darting from door to door, flinching against the clawing nails raking over his face, and he makes sure not to let go too soon. Holds on until the pulse under his bottom lip is gone, until it's been a small eternity since the last struggles, and then he wriggles until he can get a knife off the dead man's belt and cut himself loose. He licks his lips nervously, gaze darting to the camera that's at slightly the wrong angle, that may or may not have recorded the whole thing, and he hopes no one is monitoring the damn thing remotely because if they are he is so screwed.
He crouches by the doors and presses light as air with his fingertips until he figures out which one is unlocked, and then he doesn't have a plan better than running like hell, so he blows a kiss at the camera and Atlantis and his team safe at home and not held as bargaining chips, and he takes a deep breath and goes.
It takes two endless days to sneak to the gate, and then he's completely stumped by the armed guard constantly monitoring it. He stays far away, far enough that they're ants milling in military precision around a bottlecap, and studies the pattern of dialing in. Someone comes running every time the wormhole activates, talks on a radio in agitation, and he really wishes he could listen in, and then abruptly the wormhole closes and they start dialing out, and he knows this is his one and only godsend of a chance.
He gets down to the gate just as they slide through a small tape, the kind that camcorders use, and before he can think better of it he runs like hell for the pretty blue, because running like hell is still the best idea he's had.
He makes it through, mostly by virtue of tripping, and he falls out the rematerialization at the exact velocity he entered the event horizon and falls on his face. Voices erupt all around him and the beautiful sheen of a shield frosts across the gate behind him and he grins up at the beautiful art-deco ceiling and decides he has great luck, really incredible luck. There's familiar uniforms pulling him away from the gate, lovely P-90's all around, and he could just kiss someone. He's just that happy, feeling so good he's limp all over, grinning so wide he thinks he's split his face or possibly just the clawed cuts on his cheeks.
There's a handful of brilliant flashes of bodies rematerializing against the shield, and then his team is there. Teyla strips off her jacket and rests it around his shoulders, and that's about when he realizes he's naked and starts to blush with most of his body. Naked in the gateroom, jeez, it's like teenage nightmares about high school except with Marines. Ronon scoops him up like some romance heroine, and he obligingly tosses his arms around the guy's neck and kisses him on the cheek, and he can feel Ronon's laugh against his side, real and there and real, and John is at the top of the stairs with the most broken look in his eyes so Rodney waves reassuringly and falls unconscious.
He wakes in Carson's infirmary, and he knows instantly that he's in Atlantis, although it takes a few more moments to remember the sequence of events. Yawning widely, he stretches to pop his back, and the two motions split more than a few scabs open. Carson will have a fit. He considers that for a moments before scrambling for the chart hung at the end of his bed.
He knows enough medical jargon (years of what of other people called hypochondria and he called justified paranoia) to determine that the list of his injuries is pretty accurate, but he's not sure if he's got an infection. There's no mention of his larynx, so they probably thought he'd been so quiet from shock and bravery and stuff like that. Idiots.
That's when John comes in, of course, poking his head through the privacy curtain with a little lop-sided smile.
"Hey," he says brightly, "Can I come in?" Rodney rolls his eyes and nods assent, adjusting his pillow so he can sit up. John gives him a hand, because one-armed pillow-wrangling is really kinda difficult. He can technically still use his broken arm, since one of the two bones in his forearm is still intact, but there's no reason to push himself here.
"So we got your message," John says a little petulantly. "But I still don't get why you had to stay behind." Oh, the message he sent off after he was captured but before they took his things. The message he'd barely finished before the radio was jerked off his ear. The message that he thinks might have been the last words he'll ever speak, and it's that thought that makes him look away from John guiltily.
"Hey," John says gently, reaching out to put a warm hand on Rodney's shoulder, "It's okay. I get it, shit happened. That happens to us a lot. I just wanted to help, and you sounded so pissed off when I tried to talk..."
Rodney's glaring at him hard enough to actually get his attention, and then he mimes writing on a paper. John goes a step better and brings him a laptop - Rodney's not actually sure they have paper, and anyway he types a hell of a lot faster than he can write out.
'They didn't know it was a radio until you talked back,' Rodney jots down, spinning the screen around almost before he hits the last keys. That had really been irritating, losing his last connection to Atlantis just before breaking loose and spending a week in the wild instead of getting picked up by jumper or something.
The expression on John's face cracks a little as he reads it, though, and Rodney suddenly realizes that John blames himself and has definitely watched all the damn tapes and is probably now reciting a list of all the ways he could have rescued Rodney if he only hadn't talked back when Rodney told him to run for the gate.
Rodney does the rational thing and slaps him upside the head.
"Ow," John objects, but it brings him back to the here and now, and Rodney types as fast as he can before John goes off to his guilty place again.
'I did fine, you have control issues, and why don't I have an IV? Carson's slipping, he usually jumps at the chance to stick a needle into someone.'
John's brow draws together, confusion instead of worry, and he says, "But you're fine. I mean, aside from massive trauma, and please stop getting hit in the head, you're nourished and hydrated and everything."
'Idiots, the lot of you,' Rodney types furiously. 'It was the damn water, then. It's really incredible stuff. I wanted to bring back samples. It must provide full nutritional value, but I never figured out if it was an additive, and they clearly eat other things because there was that bread, so it was probably an additive after all.' John ends up reading over his shoulder instead of waiting for Rodney to finish, and by the end he's gone a little green.
"All they gave you was water? Carson, get in here!" He sticks his head out and ends up with a nurse instead, and Rodney's never been so glad to see a needle. He knows for a fact he can't handle solid food right now, and if they tried to feed him he'd get sick all over everything and that would just be embarrassing.
Through the gap in the curtain he can see Radek pacing, and he wonders why on earth Radek is in the infirmary until he realizes the crazy man must be here to visit Rodney, that he's actually waiting his turn to visit Rodney, and his fingers find the keyboard before he can think better of it.
'Thank you,' he writes for John. 'It helped,' a long pause to take a deep breath and brace himself for complete honesty, 'to know that you were watching. If it had just been me,' and he has to stop and try that again, 'I can't be brave for myself.'
John shoos the nurse away and leans over Rodney's shoulder, frowning at the look on his sunburned face. "Hey," he starts, "what's wrong?"
Rodney gestures at the screen impatiently and watches John's face as he reads, watches how the skin around his eyes tighten, how his face doesn't go dead with guilt and recrimination. It goes right by that into predatory, that closed-off look that haunted him every time Kolya's name was mentioned in casual conversation, the look that says if you build me a nuclear bomb, I'll push it through the damn gate myself.
'So,' Rodney types, watching John still instead of his fingers, 'how do you feel about explosives?'
John grins like a madman, and Rodney grins right back.