Disclaimer:I do not own Stargate Atlantis.
A/N: Just a few warnings for some graphic descriptions of violence. The next chapter for this (the last) will be up within the next few days. I apologize ahead of time for the depressing tone of this one, but it had to come out and be written. As always, do let me know what you think.
Thanks to Ethell on GateWorld for some great feedback.
Pharos
Chapter One
"...And long after it's light was extinguished, memories of it glowed in the minds of men." - E.M. Forster
"What'd you dream about, Rodney?"
Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, Rodney's mind attempted to sort out the words whispered softly to his ear.
He clumsily fought the liquid pull of oblivion and lightly grasped the hand drawing lazy circles on his chest.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rodney mumbled, his voice fading slightly.
"Rodney."
"Shhhhhh..." Rodney whispered as he allowed his eyed to fall shut. He thought to maybe lead by example then they'd both get some rest.
"Rodney." She was singing his name; wisps of air blowing enticingly against his ear as her lips moved softly against the side of his neck.
"Shhh – oomph!"
One toned leg was thrown across his prone form and a very shapely body arranged itself not-so-delicately on top of him.
"Rodney."
"Jennifer," he sang back to her and sighed, prying sleepy eyes open to gaze at her laughing face.
She was bent forward, golden hair cascading down around her face. He could have reached up a few centimetres to toy with the ends of her lustrous hair, but moved his hands to settle her wriggling hips instead.
She pouted playfully at him, eyes twinkling, as she stroked her hands over his shoulders. She batted long lashes, her hands gently caressing his chest.
"Why won't you tell me, Rodney?" She inquired. "It seemed delightful. Was it not about me?" She all but purred into his ear.
"One, because I still have no idea what you're talking about," he began his reply, but her hands stroking his stomach were making it difficult to remember his second reason.
"I have ways of making you talk, McKay."
"Not so," Rodney stuttered.
Her lips were trailing wet, hot kisses down his neck. Her hands venturing lower down his torso until that first touch of her nimble fingers sent all thought spiralling from his mind.
"I think you're actually having the opposite effect," he helpfully pointed out.
Rodney felt her smile against his shoulder then felt her hands stop their delicious ministrations.
She rose up to rest her forehead against his. Laughing brown eyes met seriously frustrated blue ones and he could feel her body vibrating with suppressed laughter.
"Like I said," she whispered huskily as she pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose. "I have some seriously cruel ways of making you talk."
"Talk!" A deep voice bellowed. It carried, reverberating off the dark, dank walls of the cell, hitting him with near to equal force as the blow to his stomach.
Everything hurt; each breath sending daggers of pain dancing across his ribcage.
Rodney had lost count of the number of times he'd been punched, kicked, slapped, and whipped. They'd all started blending together at some point; his body no longer differentiating between the blunt, bone-cracking force of a fist or the sharp crack of a whip breaking skin.
Pain was pain. His nerves so abused, he wondered if they'd ever stop burning.
"I could talk," he struggled to speak the words through cracked lips. "I'm really good at talking."He sounded drunken even to his own ears, but his head wasn't making any sense anyway. His thoughts were jumbled, he couldn't focus. And there was that ever present nothingness lurking at the back of his mind, beckoning him over, singing to him, lulling him to peace, promising his beaten body a chance to rest...
A sharp slap to the face brought him back to reality.
"You ain't goin' nowhere 'till I get my answers."
So loud. That voice was always so loud and his ears were always ringing.
"Shhhh..." Rodney hushed under his breath.
Suddenly all he could breathe were noxious fumes and hot air. He cracked swollen lids open a fraction and would have reeled back in fright at the blurry vision of the scarred and pockmarked face before him, but his muscles had ceased obeying him hours and hours ago. He'd become nothing more than dead weight hanging from chains.
"You don' want me to bring my friend," the voice cautioned softly.
Rodney gagged at the foul breath he was forced to inhale and unsuccessfully attempted to avoid the spittle sent his way with every word. It hit his cheek to mix with the blood on his face.
"I'm a gentle soul you see," the voice rasped. "Give me the codes I need to get to Atlantis and this," he gestured with one meaty fist around the dismal dungeon. "All this stops. You ain't gotta hurt no more."
His squat, smashed nose sat tip to tip with Rodney's. His dark, bottomless eyes boring holes into a pale, unseeing stare and he waited. And continued to wait with patience unexpected of one of his profession.
This patience was rewarded with a weak stream of blood and spit when Rodney tried to coordinate his facial muscles long enough to return the favour.
The bestial man stepped back slowly, deliberately, wiping at the offensive fluid with the back of his hand.
"Believe you me. You'll wish you hadn' done that. My friend ain't so nice. He makes everyone talk. Everyone." With those final words, he stepped aside to reveal a diminutive figure cloaked in darkness.
Through the swollen slits of his lids and the blur of tears, mucus, and blood, Rodney couldn't distinguish any specific features. He saw only a small man, of slight build, shorter than average, gliding delicately towards him.
"Hello, Dr. McKay." His voice was higher pitched than the other man's - his words devoid of accent or affectation. "I'm told you are being particularly difficult."
Rodney watched the figure give a slight nod and suddenly he was sent plummeting to the floor, his body no longer suspended from the ceiling.
His shoulders screamed in agony at the sudden change in position. His legs, unaccustomed to the weight of his body any longer, simply refused to bear him up and he landed in an unceremonious heap on the wet, mould-ridden floor.
Before his abused body could relish in the relief of rest, Rodney felt hard hands grab his upper arms and he was painfully lifted off the floor and laid on a cold, hard surface. Rusty metal shackles bit into the abrasions on his wrists. He felt them slam shut around his ankles and tried to struggle. Weak attempts to pull himself free only drew chuckles from his new captor.
"That is good, Doctor. I was worried that my colleague had beaten all the life out of you. Then what would there have been left for me?" That cold voice spoke almost too softly, too calmly, vainly attempting to hide madness behind a facade of civility.
"Now, "the small man continued once satisfied that the shackles would hold his captive. "I will not ask you to speak. You seem an intelligent man. I am also an intelligent man."
Unseeing and dizzy from pain and movement, it sounded like the voice had no fixed origin. It took Rodney's disoriented brain several seconds to realize that the soft footfalls meant the man was encircling him – like a predator stalking its prey.
"You know that to make the pain stop, you must tell me what I want to know. So I will not say it again.
"Let us begin."
And so they did with a flood of fire that sent all of Rodney's nerve endings screaming.
His body arched upwards off the table, his muscles spasming uncontrollably. There was no part of him that didn't know agony. It was complete, all consuming, and when his brain thought that it should stop because nothing so horrible could last forever, it just kept on going; a world of fire with no end.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased.
Rodney desperately dragged stale air into starved lungs. His body still in aftershocks, twitching sporadically with leftover current.
"Again."
Fire. He knew only fire for a few brief seconds before he knew nothing.
It didn't last as long this time or maybe he'd blissfully lost consciousness. He couldn't focus long enough to figure it out.
Through the ringing in his ears, Rodney could make out soft cries in the underground chamber – whimpers and groans.
Me, he realized and wondered how much more torture he could endure before his body refused to allow it any longer.
You can make it end sooner, a traitorous little voice whispered through the fog in his head.
No, he replied meekly.
Yes.
"No," he groaned aloud.
And the burning fire was upon him again.
They'll understand, the voice bellowed for attention in his head. When they see you, they'll understand.
Surely they will, Rodney convinced himself.
This was just too much. No human being could be expected to withstand this level of torture. Every second he spent enveloped in this all-encompassing agony was another second of his life he knew he didn't have.
Not even Sheppard. Not even he could withstand this.
It was only a code. One little code and the burning would end and he could sleep and breathe and go home.
Rodney opened his mouth, ready to end it all, and screamed.
"Oh. My. God!"
Rodney snorted into Jennifer's hair at those unexpected words. He would have done more, but he didn't think his body was ready for movement quite so soon.
"Remind me to annoy you more often."
"I think," Rodney mumbled. "That would be the death of us."
"Speak for yourself," she retorted. "I still have several more wild nights of passion left in me."
"Well," Rodney started, attempting to throw some authority behind his words, "Speaking as a man more than several years your senior," and grunted as her hand collided with the side of his ribs. "I think I must beg off any more wild passion for tonight."
Jennifer giggled at his words, kissing his shoulder as he gracelessly pushed himself to rest face down on the pillow beside her.
One leg still encircling his waist, she turned on her side to gaze lovingly at the man who never ceased to surprise her.
She ruffled one hand through his hair, down the nape of his neck, to rub lazy circles on his broad back until he turned his head towards her.
"Careful," Rodney warned. "You're beginning to look moony."
This time Jennifer let out a hearty laugh and kissed him soundly on the mouth. She pulled back long enough to watch his eyes go dark then returned her lips to his in a gentler meeting.
She pulled away several seconds later and rested her head on the pillow beside him, barely a breath away.
"Can I tell you a secret?" She whispered against the delicate skin of his cheek.
Rodney raised an eyebrow at the question and nodded, his nose brushing against hers in the process.
"I never wanted to come here. Not really."
Her hand had continued its gentle caress across his back, stroking along his spine, digging in slightly where she felt a corded muscle.
"It was my dad actually who convinced me. Not that he knew exactly what he was convincing me to do, but he'd always been there to make sure I never gave up. Never made the easy decision because something else would hurt too much or seemed too difficult."
"You made the right choice," Rodney mumbled against her lips. "Or rather he did."
Jennifer pulled back just enough that Rodney could make out the brilliant smile spreading across her face.
"He did, didn't he?"
Her hand continued its blind traverse across the planes of his back – soft and cool against his skin. Fingertips danced across his skin, stroked between his shoulder blades, ran lightly through the fine hair at the base of his skull, before running back down to lie at the small of his back.
The gentle caress of her palm, the sensation of her skin skimming along his, all lulled him into a blissfully deep slumber.
He fought not to scream as the sharp edge of the blade traced fine lines across the skin of his forearm. Bright red blood seeped into the broken skin, trickling down the curve of his arm to drip onto the table beneath him.
Rodney bit his lip until he tasted blood, cast his eyes towards the ceiling and struggled not to move, not to utter a sound. He refused to give the man the satisfaction of hearing him cry out in pain.
"I can keep going, Doctor." The dark figure's voice sliced through the musty air, as sharp as the dagger he wielded. "But I don't have to." That voice was close to his ear now, whispering dark thoughts, "You can make it stop. You know how to make it stop."
"You've got it all wrong, you know." Rodney's tortured throat struggled to form coherent sounds; his voice no louder than a whisper and harsher than sandpaper.
"It's the threat of torture that really makes people talk." Talking would help keep his mind off the blade now making minute incisions into the skin of his upper arm.
The first tiny cut had stung, but no more. It had barely registered in his mind. His body had become a veritable catalogue of broken bones, lesions, and contusions. What was one more paper cut?
But one cut had quickly turned into two and two into ten and ten had become a countless array of delicate lines traced across his pale skin. Soon, he'd been writhing in pain, vainly attempting to move away from the wretched blade. Now he knew his only option was to endure it until the blissful oblivion of sleep claimed him.
"Pain is scary. People tend to do whatever possible to avoid it." What was he saying? He was babbling.
"Then you, Doctor, are a unique sort of man," the nameless man replied thoughtfully. "But in my many years of experience I have discovered that the threat of pain is nowhere near as scary and...convincing...as pain itself."
Rodney fought to bite back the whimper rising in his throat as a hand pressed down on the multitude of abrasions on his arm. He couldn't suppress the groan escaping when that hand raked nails down the length of his arm, trailing blood in its wake.
"One code," that merciless man whispered, his hand punctuating the request by applying more pressure.
"No," Rodney gasped.
"Do you know what it is you are protecting?" That thin voice questioned softly. "A city that does not belong to you. A city that belongs to this galaxy and its people, not to some wayward explorers from another galaxy seeking technological advancement." Anger was beginning to claw its way into the preternaturally calm voice.
"Do you know what my people could become with the knowledge of the Ancestors at our disposal? What all the people of this galaxy could become? Yet you claim the right to dole it out like rations for the poor." Every word he spat out as if ridding himself of putrid waste. Each sentence punctuated by a new cut, a deeper cut; more spilled blood left to trail over the curves of his arms, legs, shoulders, to trail hotly down his body and pool on the surface beneath him. More pain.
"Well, we've finally had enough. We've taken matters into our own hands."
"By kidnapping the head scientist and torturing him to within an inch of his life?" Rodney stuttered and stumbled, but succeeded in spitting out the words. "That surely bodes well for what you could become. I can't possibly imagine why we refused to give you access to the database."
Rodney swallowed back the bubble of hysteria threatening to rise up to the surface from the pit of his stomach. The utter ridiculousness of the situation wasn't lost on him, however.
In their single-minded attempt to grab a hold of the Ancients' knowledge base, these people had forgotten that which was most necessary for any civilization's fruitful advancement.
Hysterical or not, the situation was at the very least laughable.
A snort, a giggle, and then a full blown guffaw exploded from deep within Rodney's chest. The unfamiliar sound reverberated off the walls of his cell, multiplying into a cacophony of sound long unheard in the bowels of this earth.
If Rodney hadn't felt the sharp stab of his ribs protesting the sudden movement and the harsh scraping against his beleaguered throat, he wouldn't have thought himself still capable of such a sound.
The blade paused mid-stroke against his chest, the tip quivering slightly as the dark figure loomed over Rodney, dumbfounded at such a response.
The hysteria Rodney had for so long managed to suppress now demanded to be released, and he was helpless to stop it.
Countless hours of mindless, excruciating agony culminated in one long series of gasping snorts and outright laughter. His lungs struggled to fill and refill with precious air as his body shook from the sheer force of each breath.
The blade resumed its course along his chest – cutting harder and deeper this time – its bearer furious.
The pain was inconsequential. Rodney was at the mercy of a brain too long besieged by agony.
The blade cut deeper and cut longer, his body bled, but Rodney just laughed and laughed and laughed.
To be continued...
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