Updated thanks to kind PMs and lovely Reviews. There's more in the next weeks. I promise.
He turns his head a little, looking another way to find Inmi heading his way.
His arm is swollen, turning purplish black where it's poking out of the makeshift bandage someone has put on it, and he carries a bundle of cloth in his good hand.
"McKay," he says, sitting down. "What you did today was brave," he adds, probably knowing the name from Arol.
Rodney shrugs the shoulder that doesn't sting so much. "I'd call it stupid, but if you'd like to go with brave."
Inmi's laugh comes as a surprise and seems startling loud in the upcoming night. Rodney figures it's the pretty Sheppard-ish reply that causes it and tries awkwardly to get one arm under his hurting body to push himself into a half sitting position.
"Oh it was stupid, too," Arol adds. "There is no doubt that the guards will keep an eye on you now that they know you don't hesitate to open your mouth."
Just what Rodney needs, he thinks, more attention. "People love me for that," he says grumpily. "Always have."
Inmi sets the bundle of cloth down before Rodney and smiles, the look of disapproval from the other day missing completely as he watches him.
"I was wrong about you," he says and shakes his head before rising to his feet again. "Your water might not be a total waste."
Rodney wants to explain how much he's worth exactly, but that seems in a completely different life and so he just nods, says nothing and accepts the cloth. It's a fresh shirt, supposed to keep what insects there are off the wounds in the night and he curls up into the ditch in the sand on his stomach after putting it on, arms curled around his body to absorb what warmth the sand offers.
Arol is still sitting vigil by the ditch's side as Rodney wakes the next morning.
So seemingly he got himself adopted by yet another giant.
And that's not the only change.
The broad shouldered men with the unspeakable names hand him his water wordlessly this time and, opposite to what he expects, he doesn't end up stomping the plaster while being pissed at either. Well, not that he actually is of much use with the way he can not really move as he is supposed to with his aching back, but he can't pick his job around here.
It becomes only stranger as one of the blond guys with the papers appears before him and mumbles something about yesterday and orders and that he should follow him up the ramps. They walk all the way up to the top level and Rodney feels almost smug about the way his genius has been acknowledged by Argar until they walk past one of the blonds he has seen before, strung up over the side of a stone block in a position that is not physically possible – at least not while still being alive.
"What happened to him?" he asks, staring up at the bloody and beaten corpse.
The blond guy cringes and avoids looking up. "He was in charge yesterday," he says and walks on, and after a moment of hesitation Rodney follows.
That explains why Argar put him on this group then; he probably counts on stringing Rodney up the same way pretty soon.
By the time Rodney reaches the top of the pyramid smug has been replaced fully by the cold and heavy feeling in his stomach, that this may not be the relief it promised to be, even although he gets some water and a place to sit down before he collapses now, one mess up and he knows who will bleed for it.
That's how Rodney ends up sitting in the shadow of a tent on top of a half finished pyramid, hands curling around a cup full of muddy water. He marvels at the sight of nothing but sand and sparkling ripples all around for a very long time while catching his breath and comes to the understanding that perhaps they're just building the thing to build it.
There is nothing as far as he can see, and perhaps it's just a sign that they were there at one point and nothing else.
"Come into the tent!" one of the pale haired guys says, head poking out from behind the tent opening and Rodney follows before the guard at the side becomes twitchy.
The plans the men are looking over are rough drawings of what their monument is supposed to look like at some point in the future; they lack the fine structure of a normal blueprint and it's a miracle that the walls are even standing as they do now.
The entire building probably holds only with the help of its own weight and the tons of plaster and sand stomped in between the stone walls. Countless lines show corrections in the plans over several periods of time and he is sure there have been too many senseless deaths like those yesterday to properly count painted into the coal lines as he traces them.
"We will have the next five outer wall blocks delivered by the end of the next lunar circle," another man says and unfurls a map that, as it turns out, is a lot more interesting than the other ones.
It's not as crude as the previous papers and looks more like one of the blueprint readouts from back on Atlantis, full of Ancient writing and perfect math in every way. Rodney trails a hand over the symbols, reading energy converter and circuits, feeling a little like touching a little piece of home.
"Are there more blueprints like this?" he asks curiously.
"Yes," the one who has unfurled the printout says and produces a pile of other maps and blueprints.
Nothing is as old as the Ancient blueprint is, but Rodney can see at which point they turned away from what the original plan was and what they're making of it now. Somewhere along the way someone has taken an Ancient building, probably an old base, and built a stone structure around it. The next generation added another one and the leader after that wanted to make it even bigger.
He can't tell what kind of base it was, not by the one proper blueprint alone, but perhaps it is still there and that makes him hope, all improbability aside.
"How old is this plan?" he asks and lifts the Ancient blueprint from the piles before him.
"Older than the old kings," one says. "They have ordered to erect this place."
"We have been building this monument for many generations since theses days," another one says. "Do you know the writings?"
"Yeah," Rodney says, not giving away more.