Rodney still remembered the fingers on his skin, the callouses skating over his back and nails leaving only pale lines in their wake. He still remembered the lips that trailed along his collarbone and the tongue, the breath that made him shiver even in the warmth of the room.
The way he writhed, he cursed, he loved, and he lived. All flashes of times now gone, pushed into the past so very unwillingly.
Life had kept going ("One day at a time, Rodney," she'd said) and everyone moved on, sorrow lasting for what he thought of as moments.
They didn't understand. They'd never even known. An entire love kept secret at their discretion and he wanted to scream, but his lips were in a perpetual thin line: the only way he could avoid a white padded room. He couldn't tell them.
He had to follow their lead and he put one foot reluctantly, exhaustedly, in front of the other. The science department ("Hard sciences, Elizabeth. I don't mean the voodoo factory on level three!") excellerated their output and research, most of their advances made in the after hours. Of course, no one ever mentioned it because death by McKay was on the John Sheppard Approved Ways to Die in the Pegasus Galaxy – provided free to all new personnel care of Radek J. Zelenka, Ph.D. - and the only working coffee pot was in his possession.
New technology was introduced, new computer databases unlocked. The colony flourished under guidance and the Oversight Committee had to hold onto their hats as even more appeared, shipped home to Earth with the strictest of instructions. They ah'ed over the opened crates, safe in the SGC millions of lightyears away while Rodney pushed himself ever harder.
Days passed. Three, four, then five, six. Months followed, marked by the silent anniversaries he celebrated in solitude in quarters that were so seldom used. He didn't sleep there, didn't even shower there. ("You've got to sleep," they said to him. "In a proper bed for more than an hour.") What point was there to living in a place he no longer thought of as home?
The cot in the labs sat steps from his favorite bench, Air Force issued woolen blanket neatly laid over it, served him well on the nights when he couldn't stop himself from slaving over something new. Medical equipment, engineering tools... he identified every last one that fell into his hands, refusing the help of his staff as he slowly pushed them further and further away.
He never did notice the concern that weighed them down or the glaze in Radek's eyes that spoke of unspoken knowledge. Rodney was much too busy to pay attention to mediocre things like that.
Then Elizabeth stepped in, the entire Medical staff behind her. ("What's going on with you?" She'd begged.) She didn't even let him finish his day's work, demanding he take a few days off, and just like that Rodney broke.
Shattered, splintered. There were a thousand and one words that could have been used. Gone to pieces, fell apart, or his personal favorite "had an episode." His psych file would say Major Depressive Disorder - breakdown, written neat and feminine on the lined pink paper that Kate preferred, but the city gossip line (Zelenka, Brown, Kavangh, Dex, and Lorne as Rodney had identified them long ago) would say broke and later he would agree.
He nearly avoided being sent back to Earth, recalled by the government, but Elizabeth appealed and argued until the brass gave in. ("Rodney is not to be told," she had ordered.) The one stability he had would remain; he would still have his city and what little peace he could draw from it.
There was no padded room nor guards, just the friends who'd deemed themselves his keepers. They dragged him from the labs at night, nudged him to eat, and begged for conversation when words, once his scathing ally, turned to silence. He'd tried wit to keep them away, tried anger, and bitterness and when they continued to slip into life, Rodney turned to ignoring.
A year passed, then two. New recruits came (and sometimes went), battles fought, and refugees taken in; blood, sweat, and tears continued to be the norm in the science division where Rodney continued to reign supreme though without the heavy tongue of his heyday. The mess hall staff went through a lull of cooking and fuck, did he loathe the nights they made chocolate cake – it always tasted like the meatloaf which usually tasted like the tuna tetrazzini.
Year three, ("He calls it P.I., but apparently I am not supposed to know that," Radek stated over a half eaten plate of linguine and clams though he hesitated to actually call the latter such,) was a mish-mash of change. The IOA, so set on their own agendas and always bickering, cracked and splintered and the SGC, busy with their own set of problems, quietly instructed Elizabeth on her best course of action.
Secretly, she began setting up the programs, sending out the paper memos and accompanying instructions to do away with them later. Her quarters became a meeting place between the senior staff, the Daedalus commanders, the leaders of the mainland. Her office, a facade to keep appearances up.
And it was in her office that the facade fell, the Stargate fluttering to nothingness beneath her gaze and the computer bleating wildly at her and Chuck.
IDC: Sheppard, John. Lieutenant Colonel.
Her voice was barely a whisper as she called Rodney, her feet somehow gaining momentum to drag her through the control room, down the steps, and to stand directly in front of him though the scent of death and decay permeated the air around him.
Black hair, once just towing the line of regulation, was shaggy and long, and his eyes were shadowed dark from whatever hell he'd seen. His clothes were ripped and threadbare, but identifiable as the mission's early uniform; his hands shook gently at his sides where his gun was no longer seated in a missing thigh holster.
"Elizabeth," he said, conviction in his tone as though he'd been wrong before but was willing to take a chance. He reached up to touch her, fingers creeping along her face, satisfying whatever requirement he needed and promptly fell to his knees, weak.
On the floor, holding on to each other ("They let you go, they let you go," she murmured over and over) was how Rodney found his friends when he rushed into the 'gate room. He choked at the sight, air leaving his body in a flush and his lips tinging blue until automatic reflex kicked in.
"They always told me when the delegation would come. I guess they thought I'd snap or something if I knew there was someone to rescue me and no way to actually do it. I did see Lorne running through the cells once," he told them much, much later when the city was asleep but for a dozen people crowded around an infirmary bed in varying states of exhaustion.
"Of course you had no way of knowing they were even cells, given the way they look. They liked to watch you like it was game to see who would come and how many and where you'd go to try to find me. And actually they stopped accepting your visits when I asked them to," John explained with the blanket up around his shoulders and another dragged up over his back while he sat on a mattress for the first time in so very long. He cast a look at his beloved leader, the way she clearly was thinking of the benefit to disagreeing.
"You would never have gotten my freedom, Elizabeth. They demanded I serve my time and at least if they thought you weren't going to interfere further, I could get out of the isolation chambers. I had to sleep outside, eat what I found, but inside I had no idea of time or space or hear anything."
The stroke of Rodney's hand down his back was a topic that had been – and would continue to be – studiously avoided, yet everyone noticed the ease both men took from it. Particularly when John turned to Rodney and told him, softly, "I would do it again to save you from what they did to the others."
An answer to the question Rodney McKay couldn't ask, though he leaned over to do the one thing no one could avert their eyes from; their first kiss in three Atlantean years.
Ten for John.