It took thirty two days in hell before Cam settled on just what exactly the worst part of it was.
The heat was obvious. Too obvious, really. The idea of eternal flames, blood red skies and the unbearable, unrelenting scorching of his skin might have terrified his twelve year old self when sitting in the church pews back home in Kansas.
But that was before two tours of duty in the Middle East taught him that when it came to hot, the human body really only had two settings: survivable, and not survivable. Didn't matter what the thermometer read - as long as you were still breathing, you were doing just fine. Suck it up and jack off to the thought of ice cream and air conditioning once you were back in your bunk, soldier.
Then, too, it was also before Cam learned about the existence of alien snake parasites that liked to play dress up with all humanity's favorite myths and legends. He didn't consider himself devout by any proper God-fearing man's standards, but for all he'd seen in his life, he was still just enough of a corn fed Midwestern boy to dig his heels in when faced with an alien despot trying this damn hard to weaponize Old Testament imagery.
His mission had been to lead a squadron of the SGC's brand new F-302's in an assault on Sokar's palace on Delmak. But they'd been given a full debrief on the neighboring moon of Netu too, Sokar's personal prison, the most infamous setting in the galaxy. Even before deploying his fighter from the captured Goa'uld mothership that was the SGC's greatest pride and joy, Cam had heard all about how Sokar had used a similar ship to bombard Netu from orbit. Cracked open its crust, allowed whole oceans of magma to seep through; created a hellish landscape of black obsidian beneath a sky that forever burned red like the rivers of fire it reflected. No day, no night, just red and black and gray. Ash and sparks and cinder, hour after hour, day after day.
Course, the point of that part of the debrief had been to hammer home just how much of a sadistic tool Sokar was, Cam was pretty sure. Wasn't meant to prepare him to spend a month living in the damn place. But now that he had, he leaned heavily on that mission debrief to counter the psychological warfare the entire moon had been constructed to be. Facts and science to shove down his inner child, screaming 'cause he was convinced this was his eternal damnation come calling for all those times he didn't eat his vegetables like he was told. Plus assorted other sins he'd collected along the way.
It helped, a little bit. The science. The facts. At least they let Cam keep in mind just how much time and effort Sokar had put into messing with the minds of his 'less-evolved' prisoners. And he was enough of a contrary bastard to let that effort be the very thing that kept him holding strong. Even if it was just in the name of spite.
Hardly the most noble method of resisting the enemy's attempts to break him, but hey. Go with what works, right?
So no. A month into his stay in hell, and it wasn't the heat that was the worst part. Wasn't the infernal sky overhead, the rough and jagged black stone of his cell. Wasn't the slop they fed him every day like clockwork, probably engineered to be as absolutely abhorrent to the senses as possible, while still remaining edible. Wasn't even the screams echoing at all hours from cells just like his, from the halls connecting them, from the rooms at the ends of those halls where…bad things happened. No, it wasn't any of those things.
It was the boredom. That was the worst.
It was the fact that other than the first few days after his 302 was shot down and his body recovered from the wreckage, his Goa'uld captors had done fuck all in the name of trying to break him. Sure, those first days hadn't been a picnic. Had been torture, literally. First a rather unpleasant stay in that sarcophagus thing of theirs to heal all his wounds. Then an even more unpleasant period during which they tried to one-up all his previous injuries, deliberately, with focused intent. Then back in the sarcophagus. Back to the torture chambers. Rinse and repeat. A grand old time had been had by all, Cam was pretty sure. He'd spent the twenty seven days since then trying to block it all out, so he couldn't be definitive on that count.
But after those first five days? Nada. Nothing. Zip. Kaput. Should've been a relief, hell, it's not like he'd enjoyed his hosts' attention. But as the days dragged on and his guards showed zero emotion at his attempts to engage them, mock them, incite them, hell, get any kind of reaction whatsoever…well. The boredom became a cause for concern, all its own.
It was the fact that they didn't seem to want anything from him that gave Cam the skeeves. Why keep him alive then? If they didn't want intel, didn't want him as a host (thank God, but still) - if they didn't even want his pain and humiliation to whet Sokar's infamous sadistic appetites, what the hell did they want from him? And why hadn't they just dropped him in one of those fiery pits already?
It was a question without an answer, and Cam with nothing but all the time in the world to spend trying to answer it. The whole thing was driving him a little bit insane, he privately figured. (Not that he had anyone around to publicly figure it to.) And so it was that on day thirty two of Cam's stay in hell, he decided. It was the boredom that was the worst part. Definitely the boredom.
He wasn't really sure what to make of the timing, then, when day thirty three came calling - and everything changed.
The shouting caught Cam's attention first. His head jolted up from where it was resting on his folded forearms, arms resting on knees, huddled into the corner of his cell. The endless screams had all but faded into white noise long ago, but shouting - shouting was new. He scrambled to his feet, just in time for the lock to turn heavily, with ominous intent. Then the cell door swung inward, crashing against the stone wall as another man was shoved unceremoniously into the room.
Cam took stock of him quickly. Tall, white, dark hair skewing wildly despite the black tactical gear and uniform that proclaimed him to be of at least some division of the American military, though Cam couldn't make out any distinguishing patches in the dim lighting. He regained his footing easily, Cam noted, but made a show of still stumbling around before catching himself against the far wall. Used it as a cover to survey his surroundings, get his bearings. He was pretty slick about it, Cam thought approvingly as the man's eyes swept across the room to him, sizing him up at a glance. Belatedly he remembered to be self conscious; he was wearing just his briefs and his dogtags, the mangled remains of his own uniform discarded on the other side of the cell. He did mention the heat, right?
His new roommate saved any judgment for the guards, however, seemingly content to ignore Cam for the moment.
"Gotta say, I'm not at all impressed with the accommodations here, fellas," he said, spinning and resting his back against the wall with a lazy, disaffected air. It would have struck Cam as ignorant bravado if not for the wiry tenseness that had him confident the other man was well aware just how fucked he was. "What's the point of being an advanced alien species if you don't even have some fancy forcefield to intimidate your prisoners with? I'm afraid I'm gonna have to insist on speaking to your supervisor, 'cause this just isn't working for me."
"Insolent worm," one of the guards barked. He hovered in the doorway, staff leveled threateningly. Cam narrowed his eyes. Something about the guard's behavior felt off. For starters, he wasn't sure why he hadn't just left already. "You are not fit to lick our superior's boots, let alone speak with him."
"Wow. Kinda weird that your mind jumped there. I mean, I was just talking about registering a complaint and here you've already got me licking boots?" The man turned to Cam with exaggeratedly wide eyes. "They get this kinky with everyone around here or do they just think I'm pretty or something?"
Cam snorted despite himself. He should tell him to save his breath, save himself some pain by not goading the guard, but he was too busy being equal parts fascinated by both the actual goading and the fact that it was working. After a month of getting no reaction from his own attempts at baiting any and all Jaffa he'd encountered, he wasn't sure why this newcomer was having so much success.
There was a dark intensity in the other's gaze when their eyes met, and Cam had the suspicion he knew exactly what he was doing. That it wasn't just Cam that had picked up on that subtle shade of wrongness permeating the scene. As if to accentuate his thoughts, the guard stepped forward and backhanded the strange man across the face with one gauntleted hand. He was thrown sideways by the force of the blow, catching himself against the wall again. Coughing and spitting out blood as he collected himself. Cam winced in sympathy.
"Okay. Ground rules," his new roommate said, pointing a finger at the guard. "Blood is a hard limit. Sorry, I gotta put my foot down. It was not easy to keep this face looking this good through almost twenty years of active duty, and I've got after retirement to consider. I'm never gonna get hired to do Colgate commercials if you keep doing that."
The guard bristled and Cam braced himself, fully prepared to jump in if the situation escalated, consequences be damned. Anyone this good at pissing off Jaffa was worth defending in his book. Fortunately, the other guard chose that moment to step into the doorway just behind his compatriot. He laid a hand on the first guard's shoulder and whispered something to him. The guard relaxed - Cam did not. Mostly due to the smirk spreading across the guard's face.
"Lord Sokar will see you soon enough," he intoned at last. Each word was laden with the kind of slow deliberation one makes when savoring each syllable. "You can make your…objections known to him then."
With that, both guards drew themselves to their full height, spun on their heels and exited the cell, slamming the door behind them. A moment later that ominous click resounded again as the heavy iron lock engaged. With a shared glance of unspoken agreement, both Cam and his new friend waited for the echoes of their footsteps to fade down the hall.
"So," the other man said at last. His face was a mask of calm indifference, with only the slightest crinkle around his eyes betraying any apprehension. "On a scale of one to ten, how much am I gonna regret that later?"
Cam's raised eyebrow spoke for itself, apparently, as the newcomer's face fell before he could find any conciliatory words to offer.
"That bad, huh?"
"Fraid so," Cam said. Wasn't much point in lying to make him feel better.
"Well shit. Something to look forward to, I guess," his cellmate said, exhaling some of the tension that still held him all tight and coiled. He shook himself, not unlike a dog coming out of the rain, and snapped a sharp salute. "Sorry for the backwards ass introduction sir, must have hit my head in all the confusion. Major John Sheppard."
"At east, Major. You're just gonna make me feel inadequate if you keep that up," Cam said, casting a deprecating look down at his own state of undress. He extended his hand, grateful he managed to suppress the sob that tried to climb out of his throat when Sheppard shook it, the first real human contact he'd had in over a month. The handshake lingered longer than it should have, judging by the way the Major's mouth tightened and then softened into the faint lines of someone unaccustomed to displaying compassion via visual cues. Cam drew back, resumed his seat on the floor. Patted the ground next to him until Sheppard likewise sat. "I'm Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell."
"Ah. Yes. I mean, I know, sir."
Cam frowned. "You do?"
The other man settled himself awkwardly on the floor, long legs stretching halfway to the far wall while he rubbed at the back of his head with one hand. A seeming nervous gesture to match the sudden sheepishness washing across his face.
"I'm ah…sort of here to rescue you, sir."
"Huh," Cam said. He tried not to be obnoxious about looking out towards the hall and the clear lack of any other cavalry riding to their rescue, he really did. Wasn't his fault his social skills were about four weeks out of use. "So how's that going?"
"Ran into a few setbacks, sir," Sheppard nodded. "I'd consider it a work in progress."
He'd recovered his air of detached professionalism remarkably quickly and could've been talking about the weather for all the emotion he was displaying. Apparently the man's approach to a mission going FUBAR was to remain blase with a side of 'this is not a problem, I've got this.' Cam faced a crossroads - he was pretty good at reading people, and he felt confident this was probably a Thing with Sheppard. In his estimation, it was probably equally likely that this tended to be taken as either incredibly irritating or somehow encouraging. Exercising mind over matter, Cam chose to take it as the latter.
"Well," Cam said dryly. "As long as it's progressing, then."
"Exactly, sir. That's the spirit."
"Uh huh. That said, unless you've got one of those Asgard ships ready to beam us out in the next few hours, you might as well get more comfortable." Cam waved a hand at Sheppard's black on black uniform. "That particular ensemble's not gonna do you any favors here. Trust me, it only gets hotter. It's still early yet."
"You sure I shouldn't wait til after my audience with the Grand High Shit Lord? Wouldn't mind retaining at least some dignity," Sheppard mused. He backpedaled quickly, with a kind of hunted look. "Umm, not that you're not completely dignified as is, sir."
"Nice save," Cam smirked. He shrugged. "It's your call, but it didn't do me much good. Sokar's pretty firm on the whole 'humans are cattle' thing. Not sure clothes make a difference one way or another."
"Well in that case, far be it from me to turn down good intel."
Sheppard undressed swiftly and efficiently, folding each item of clothing as he disrobed. Cam tried not to follow his movements, tried to keep his eyes averted as more bare skin slick with sweat unveiled itself, long, sinewy limbs corded with muscle, tracks of desert-tanned flesh interrupted by the pale pink of scar tissue. He tried not to focus on the part where he'd just persuaded a subordinate officer to essentially get naked, seeing as how it was the best response to their environment and bound to happen eventually anyway. And had nothing to do with the fact that said subordinate officer was exactly Cam's type.
Major Sheppard was an extremely attractive man; he'd be thinking that no matter the circumstances they met. It wasn't like Cam was in denial about any aspect of himself or the men that made him sit at attention. It was just that under normal circumstances, Cam would have no trouble filing that piece of information away as irrelevant, a bit of trivia having no bearing on any interaction he might have with the Major. But starved for human contact, uncertain of the future, if he had one at all - all of that was making it harder for Cam to look away than it normally would. To exert self-control, to engage the discipline he'd worked so hard to hone. It irritated him, to be faced with that loss of control, that reminder of yet another way he'd fallen since his fighter fell from the sky. Cam breathed through his nose, an angry huff.
"Not that I'm not grateful, but what made the SGC greenlight a rescue op for me? I'm surprised they even knew I survived the crash, let alone that they sent someone in here to extract me."
Sheppard rested his head back against the wall and studied him solemnly. Long enough that it made the hair on the back of Cam's next stand on end beneath the weight of that scrutiny.
"They haven't said anything to you this whole time?" Sheppard asked at last. "Given you any hint about what they intend for you?"
"Nothing," Cam said, somewhat testily. "Not sure why you think otherwise, but I don't seem to be high up on their need to know list."
"Sorry," Sheppard said, still watching him with that quiet intensity. Cam had the uneasy feeling he wasn't apologizing for what had just been said, but for something still yet to come. "They didn't at first. Know that you survived, that is. Not until about a week ago, when we got word from some of our Tok'ra allies that you were alive on Netu."
"The Tok'ra? Why would they know anything about me being here?"
"Apparently they caught wind of some backroom negotiations going on between Sokar and another System Lord named Nirrti. You heard of her?"
"Think so," Cam rasped. He didn't like where this was headed. "Likes to experiment on humans, right? Obsessed with making some kind of hyper-evolved host?"
"That's her. She uh. Seems very intent on acquiring you, it seems."
"Acquiring me," Cam repeated tonelessly. The words fell flat and he chased them off with an incredulous laugh. "I don't understand. Why me? The Goa'uld have captured plenty of SGC personnel over the past couple of years. Hasn't been too hard for them to lay traps when they want to get their hands on a Tau'ri toy to play with. What's so special about me?"
"They're not really sure," John said. His face had those faint lines again, the ones that Cam didn't know how to interpret as anything other than compassion, which was insane, because he'd had a damn month to get used to being here, Sheppard was the fresh capture, he still had blood trickling from his lip for God's sake. If anyone needed compassion right now it sure as fuck wasn't Cam. He fought back the rising tide of hysteria, only peripherally aware that's what it was. Had it really been just yesterday he'd been complaining about not having any idea why the Goa'uld hadn't killed him yet? "But whatever the reason, Nirrti seems to want you, Lt. Colonel Cam Mitchell specifically, pretty bad. Bad enough that Colonel O'Neill managed to sell the higher-ups on it being worth the risk to get you out of here, if it kept her from getting whatever it is she wants you for."
Cam shook his head, dazed. Trying to process it. Trying just as hard not to process it, because he wasn't on a gate team, had never been through the gate, but as squadron leader of the first air/space group specifically dedicated toward combat with a hostile alien species, he'd read every SG team's AARs cover to cover. Was well aware that Nirrti had devised a plague that wiped out thousands of people, an entire planet's worth of human life, just to set the stage when sending a little girl to Earth as a human bomb. The idea that she even knew who he was, that he was even on her radar, let alone as someone or something she wanted badly enough that it'd sent Tok'ra spies scurrying off to Earth to warn people…an entire month in hell did nothing to prepare Cam for the shivers that swept through him.
"My Momma always told me I was special, but here all this time I just figured she was biased," Cam drawled. He was rewarded by a loud, braying laugh from Sheppard. Followed by the real treat, a bright, blinding smile that slashed across his face, cheek to cheek, somehow sharp and deadly in a way that suited him perfectly. Cam was starting to get the sense that his time in this prison had fucked him up far more than he'd realized, because he was pretty sure Major John Sheppard was the most beautiful fucking man he'd ever seen, just as he was equally sure that couldn't be true.
Seven billion people on Earth, let's say half of them were men, statistics said it was pretty damn unlikely that the actual apex of physical male perfection would be the one man to wind up sharing a cell with him on an alien prison planet. That this was some transference, projection shit. Cam pinning all his hopes, dreams, fantasies, whatever on the first person to walk through that door not looking to torture him. His brain was definitely not working properly. His coping mechanisms were fucked. He knew enough to know that this shouldn't be the train of thought to follow learning he was key in some alien queen's master plan. That John Sheppard's smile shouldn't be his preoccupation while sitting beneath a bloody alien sky with him, facing certain death.
"So what went wrong?" Cam asked, and Sheppard's smile disappeared so fucking fast it was all but retroactive. He hated himself a little for that, but this was right. This was tactical, strategic. Information gathering, so he could - what, he didn't know. Something.
"We took a cloaked ha'tak vessel down to the surface," Sheppard recounted. A clipped, terse recitation of the bare facts, his face recomposed to that default indifference. "Six man team, handpicked. All Special Forces, we were farmed out to the SGC a few months back for precisely this kind of op. We've seen a lot of success on similar missions."
"Probably never invaded a planet-sized prison before," Cam said, vainly attempting to force even the tiniest hint of levity into his tone. He could see the storm clouds gathering in Sheppard's hazel eyes, could already guess what they heralded.
"No sir," Sheppard said. He kept his face trained on the far wall, refusing to rise to the bait. Cam hadn't expected him to, but he'd had to try. His intuition was as out of use as his social skills, but that was no excuse for not connecting the dots earlier, what it meant for Sheppard to be the only captive brought down these halls after a failed rescue mission. He'd been thrown by Sheppard's cavalier attitude, Cam told himself. The man was Special Forces, was literally trained to keep his cards close to his chest, to only let people see exactly what he wanted them to.
"We infiltrated the prison complex easily enough," Sheppard continued. "They're pretty regular in their patrols here, wasn't hard to find a rhythm and avoid crossing their paths. The Tok'ra drew us a damn map, their intel was solid. We were halfway to your location. I set off some kind of alarm."
Cam blinked, unprepared for the depths of the self-incrimination he could hear in those words, despite how casually Sheppard attempted to insert it into his retelling.
"Major-," he tried, or started to, but Sheppard wasn't having any of it. He easily steamrolled over Cam's half-hearted attempt at…what, Cam wasn't even sure.
"It was some kind of arch set into a doorway. Looked a bit like a stargate except it had crystals in place of where the chevrons are on a gate. I went through first. It lit up like a damn Christmas tree the second I was through the other side. They were on us in seconds. My men were still all on the other side. They cut them all down with staff blasts, had me surrounded. Didn't shoot at me, not even after I took out a few of them. Not sure why. Took me out with one of those zat stunner things to the back. Next thing I know I'm being marched through the halls, end up here."
Cam could see it now; excuses aside, he wasn't sure how he'd missed it before. The tenseness Sheppard had clung to from the second he'd been shoved through the door - it wasn't combat readiness, there was no one here to fight. Wasn't fear, he'd made his peace before setting foot on the surface on what was always likely to be a suicide mission. It was fury. Grief. Blame.
"It wasn't your fault, Major," he said gently. Sheppard swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing up and down.
"If you say so, sir."
He did actually. Six men had walked into hell to rescue him. Five were dead. By his math, there was only one man in this room who'd set in motion this chain of events, and it wasn't John Sheppard. He suspected pointing that out wasn't going to help Sheppard battle his demons though.
For lack of a better option, he retreated to the comfort of tactics, of strategy, of information and facts and knowledge.
"You didn't engage any hostiles prior to encountering this alarm you described?"
Sheppard's eyes cut towards him, sharp with disbelief before they blanked back to that masked glaze.
"No sir," he bit off. Cam didn't blame him. It was obvious what giving the 'debrief' had taken out of him, and he'd been coolly professional when telling it, despite his obvious turmoil. He hadn't exactly left much room for misinterpretation of any facts. But it was wrong. Something was off, had been off from the second they shoved John into his cell. Why hadn't they shot him with the rest of his team? Why had he gotten such a reaction from the guards who brought him to their cell? It couldn't just be that John had taken a few of their colleagues out before being captured. Having a reaction to that, sure, Cam could buy that. But that just didn't fit the way that one guard had been with him. Almost…defensive, the way he kept reinforcing the superiority of his 'lord' and Sheppard's unworthiness in comparison. Like he felt threatened. Spooked. And taking out a few Jaffa with a P-90 just didn't explain that kind of behavior.
"That arch," Cam said. "You sure it was an alarm of some kind?"
Sheppard frowned, but he could see the man considering it, trying to catch up to his chain of thought. "I'm not sure about anything when it comes to alien tech, sir. I think it's a mistake for anyone to be. All I know is one minute we're walking down a shadowed hallway, the next, that arch is lit up and glowing and making chiming sounds and has every guard in a hundred yards running at us."
"Anything else jump out at you? Anything at all?" Cam pressed. "I'm not trying to be an asshole here, Major. But is there anything you can think of that explains why they opened fire on your team, but not on you? Even though you were firing on them?"
"I was the only one through the arch," Sheppard said slowly. "You think that means something?"
"Could be. Like you said, there's too much we don't know about alien tech. They put me in one of those sarcophagus things to heal me when they first brought me here. For all I know, it scanned me too, told them something that made Nirrti want me as bad as she seems to."
"They were looking at the arch too," Sheppard realized. "Not just at me. They kept looking back and forth between me and the arch. They might have been surprised. Angry? It's hard to say, sir, but now that I think about it, you might be right. I don't think they all showed up because they expected the arch to do that, I think…something about it…seemed to unsettle them."
"Or something about you going through it unsettled them," Cam said, trying to sort through the implications. Problem was there were just too damn many of them and they had too few frame of references by which to judge. Sheppard's gaze was hooded now, but thoughtful, muscles dancing along his jaw and cheek as he seemed similarly intent on his own introspection.
"I wasn't sure if I was reading too much into the way they behaved with me. It…took me a bit to get a grip on my headspace, when they took me captive."
Cam shook his head. "No, your instincts were right. I've been here a month, never seen them like I did today. Something about you or something you did had them spooked."
"Fuck," the other man exhaled. "And here I was hoping that it was just that I skipped showering this morning."
Cam resisted the urge to sniff his own pits at the reminder. "Yeah, pretty sure that wasn't it."
"Damn. Well, sorry to steal your thunder then, sir. Seems like we're both special. At least as far as alien snakes weigh things."
"Lucky us," Cam said dryly.
"I always said nothing good ever comes from surpassing expectations," John mourned.
Cam laughed at that, but cut it short, sobering.
"On the off chance your work in progress doesn't pan out, what are the chances of the SGC ordering another op?"
John hesitated before meeting his eyes. "Pretty sure we were the Hail Mary, sir. Sorry."
"Right." Cam sighed. It was about what he'd expected. Hell, anyone showing up at all was more than he'd expected, so it wasn't like he was any worse off now than he'd been yesterday.
Except now he knew that scary as fuck Goa'uld System Lord Nirrti was gunning for him personally.
And five men were dead because of it.
And Major John Sheppard would either be joining them in death or joining him on some Goa'uld dissection table, if he was reading things right.
Fantastic. On second thought, yesterday wasn't looking so bad right about now.
"Well then, Major, it's a good thing we've successfully lulled our captors into a false sense of security," Cam said lightly, clapping his hands and manfully ignoring his unwashed state of near nakedness because. Morale, obviously. "They've played right into our hands."
"If you say so, sir," John said dutifully. A small smile played at the corner of his lips though, and Cam seized on it. They could totally do this, he thought with a giddiness that was probably at least 60% that rising tide of hysteria from earlier that had never exactly subsided all the way.
Okay, so odds were they were far more likely to die bloodily, painfully, far from home and with no one to ever know of their desperate attempt at freedom. But as that tiny smile flickered into a flame that only grew the longer Cam beamed at him like a fucking idiot, Cam became more and more convinced that Major John Sheppard actually might be the apex of physical male perfection.
So. Like.
The odds could suck it.