Well, the short story is written and posted (over on sgaflashfic on LJ), so here I am, back with the angst, for today's second chapter. This chapter's shorter than normal. I hope to post the final two parts tomorrow, and then we'll be done. :-)

Chapter ten: Pain

It was five days since he had escaped. Four days, twenty-three hours, to be precise. That was since the jumper had touched down in Atlantis. He didn't know how many minutes, because he hadn't had a watch then. He tried not to be bothered by that.

That was going by Earth time. The pattern of day and night was different on this new planet – different from Earth, and different from the old planet. He had dug out a calendar from somewhere – one with winter scenes in Canada, a Christmas gift from McKay – and kept it on the floor beside his bed. A tiny red cross marked the day he had returned to Atlantis. Sometimes he turned back two pages, and looked at the date he had been captured, and at the six rows of empty squares that denoted his captivity.

Empty squares. Blank paper. White room.

Nothing.

Heightmeyer kept trying to tell him that the truth wasn't true. "It wasn't nothing. They tortured you, colonel," she said. He had been ready for torture – psyched up, prepared both mentally and physically – but they hadn't touched him. No reason why he couldn't return to normal. No reason… He let out a breath. He was growing tired of repeating the same things over and over, trying to make them true. He clung to certain lines like a mantra, but they wouldn't be true, dammit, they wouldn't be true.

Sometimes they were almost true. He ate every day in the mess hall, and never looked away from any conversation he would not have looked away from before. He briefed Carter quite dispassionately about what had happened, and managed not to lose a single word. He listened to McKay prattle on about everything under the sun, and he teased him back in kind, and the words that they spoke were no different from anything they would have spoken before; it was just that the layer beneath the words was changed.

But some things were the same. Four days, twenty-three hours and an unknown number of minutes after he returned to Atlantis, he was running through the empty parts of the city, trying to keep up with Ronon.

"Are you supposed to doing this?" Ronon had asked him, before they started.

Sheppard had looked down at his too-thin body. "Probably not. Going to do it, though."

Ronon had looked at him for a long second, then nodded. That had been… - he glanced at his watch – twenty-eight minutes ago. There had been no more words since then. Ronon led the way, as he always did. "Don't go easy on me," Sheppard had been all ready to say, but Ronon didn't.

He was almost able to lose himself in running. Running was like flying; it was freedom. No white walls stopped him. No-one compelled him, and he could stop any time he liked. There were just his feet, falling one in front of the other, rhythmical, pounding…

And then pain, too, creeping in gradually, insinuating itself beneath his skin. His chest and throat hurt with the effort of breathing. His legs and his back became solid masses of pain. His feet hurt. His head ached, and dizziness stabbed like a knife between his eyes.

Ronon stopped running, and flopped forward, his hands on his knees. "Time for a rest."

Sheppard clutched at the railing, and managed to stay standing. His chest was heaving so much that he couldn't speak. It was stupid to run so far when he was out of condition, when he was still underweight, still on medication. His stomach twisted with the need for food, and he knew that his muscles would be agonisingly stiff the following morning.

"I'm not done yet," he told Ronon, and set off again, this time leading him.

The following day, he could hardly move, but that was just the pain of stiff muscles, and he knew he had to push himself past it.

After breakfast, he sought out McKay in his lab. "I'm bored," he told him, looking at the silver back of his laptop, where there was the faintest ghost of his own reflection. "They won't clear me for duty yet. So here I am – one ATA gene, ready for your disposal. Use me however you like."

McKay grumbled. The other scientists kept shooting little looks at Sheppard, then pretended to be intent on his work when he turned towards them. He clenched his fist behind his back, letting the nails dig into his palm. He took half a step backwards, then another.

McKay offered him scraps of his lunch, eaten on the run. That startled him, for he hadn't noticed that much time pass. Sometimes he counted every second in an hour, but time sometimes still ran away from him, with whole half days disappearing completely. It still scared him.

But he ate what McKay offered, and listened while McKay harangued him about something or other. "That's where you're wrong," he told him at one point, making McKay's fork freeze mid-air.

"Wrong?" McKay spluttered, but Sheppard could no longer remember what had prompted him to say what he had said, so he could not justify it.

After that, McKay tossed some Ancient device at him and told him to "make that thing work, if you really want to make yourself useful, and not clutter this place up like a puppy-dog under foot."

Sometimes McKay was the easiest to be with, and sometimes it was Ronon. Both of them acted as if nothing had changed. The flow of McKay's words still sometimes overwhelmed him, but sometimes Ronon's silence caused him to drift away and lose time. Words were an anchor, too. Silence could be danger.

He took the device, and willed it to come on. A tiny spark shot across his palm, sending a stab of pain up his arm. He sat very still. The pain came again.

"Well?" McKay asked impatiently. "What is it?"

It was small enough to fit in his palm, and he closed his fingers around it. "I don't know."

The pain grew sharper.

"No-one else could get it to work." McKay looked a little rueful. "You and your super-powered gene."

"Yeah." Sheppard closed his other hand around it, cupping it between them. The pain shot up both arms, and sank like a hook into the back of his neck. "It tickles a bit. That's all."

Half way through the sixth day, still stiff, he asked Teyla to spar with him. "Should you be doing this?" she said, echoing Ronon's question.

"Yes," he said, shortly.

He picked up the sticks, but he was out of condition. He could lose himself in running, but in a fight, you had to be altogether yourself, aware of every nuance of every movement.

He lost. She apologised every time, and he smiled, and said that it hadn't hurt a bit. His whole body throbbed by the time she lowered the sticks and refused to fight any more.

"I'm good," he told her. "I'll get you next time."

"No." She shook her head. "No, you will not. I will not be party to this any more."

"Why are you deliberately seeking out pain?" Heightmeyer asked him, the following morning.

He froze, his finger half way through tracing flight paths on the chair beside him. "I'm not."

"I have eyes," she said.

And they were eyes that he still found hard to look at. Everyone else he could face, but she wanted him to be something that he was not. She wanted him to break down and admit that he had a problem. Well, yes, he did have a problem, but he was dealing with it.

"You're deliberately trying to get hurt," she said.

It was true, of course, but it was only little things. He'd thrown the razor away, hadn't he? He'd refused to hurt himself in any way that really mattered. All he'd done was run until he was ready to drop, accept a few bruises in a fight, and cling on for too long to something that dispensed mild pain. Pain brought clarity. It stopped him drifting away; it focused all his thoughts. He was stronger when he was in pain.

"They didn't hurt you," her mild voice said. "Not physically. Would it have been easier for you if they had?"

He looked beyond her, at the sky they would not let him fly in. Physical pain was simple; it was easy. You wore it outside, and it was like a badge. It gave you a licence to act differently from normal. It justified feeling broken.

He had not meant to speak, but he knew, really, that she was trying to help him. "I was ready to face it. I was expecting it."

"The physical presence of an enemy gives you something to fight against," she said. "Is physical pain the same?"

It was something to fight, yes. By triumphing over it, he could be strong. Everyone needed a focus. Without it, you were just drifting without an engine, floating in the sea.

"Or perhaps you think you deserve the pain."

"No." His head snapped up. "What should I deserve pain?"

"I'm not saying that you do," she said, "just asking you if you think you do."

"That's the sort of damn fool stupid thing that…"

He stopped; breathed in, and out. He'd almost broken, hadn't he, when faced with six weeks of softness and nothing. He shouldn't have come that close – shouldn't have. Should never had let himself get captured in the first place. Should have tried the door before. It was six weeks, but he wasn't the only one finding it difficult. McKay seemed normal, but sometimes there was an urgent desperation to his voice. Ronon seethed with anger. Teyla tried to exude calm, but was troubled underneath. They'd left Atlantis, for God's sake, and slept rough for a month, trying to find him.

And he'd given up on them – and why hadn't they found him earlier? Why hadn't they rescued him? He'd escaped by himself, and they were just strolling along the street, and… But they'd been prepared to give up everything for him, and here he was, thinking such things about them.

"No," he said firmly, spreading his hand on the chair, and curling the ends of his fingers into the fabric. "I'm not proud of what I did. I'm not proud of how I felt, or how I feel, but I don't think I deserve pain. Don't twist everything into indicating guilt."

"I won't." She smiled at him.

He didn't try to return the smile; wasn't entirely sure he could have done so, even if he'd tried. "It must helps me focus, okay, and there's nothing unusual about that. I'm not cutting myself, or anything. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. It'll stop."

He fell asleep after dinner, not meaning to, and woke up from a dream in which he had begged them to come and torture him, to please hurt me, please, just don't ignore me, don't leave me like this, with nothing.

He couldn't see his watch. The walls of his room closed in on him, and the door was closed. There was a window, but it just showed towers and pinpricks of light, and beyond that, only darkness.

Footsteps walked past his door.

He sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. He raised a trembling hand to his face, then let it fall again. The steps faded. The steps faded. He fought the urge to go to the door and feel for food. He flashed to an image of a razor against pale skin.

I can't go on like this, he thought.

He walked to the door; pressed his hand against it, and then his brow. The footsteps did not return.

"Nothing happened," he said out loud – that tired old mantra. "I shouldn't be feeling…"

Oh no. Oh, God, no. Oh no. He couldn't do this. He woke every hour from dreams. He tried to paper over the cracks, and sometimes it worked, but then when he was alone, he felt like this. Pain had helped, but then Heightmeyer had pulled him up on it, and after that, even that escape was tainted.

Is it because you deserve pain?

No. No. Of course not. No. He wasn't that far gone, not yet. He just needed… Oh, God, he had no idea what he needed. To feel normal. Yes,that, but how? To forget that all this happened – to push it away, just like everything else.

Sometimes he wanted to be alone, and the thought of people terrified him. But then, sometimes, when he was alone, he was suddenly convinced that he'd never see anyone ever again. He was locked away in this tiny room. The footsteps in the hallway were the only sounds he would ever hear. Time would disappear into a blur of nothingness, and he would never see anyone, never hear anyone, never touch anyone…

"Are you there?" he whispered into the door. "Is anybody there?"

He felt almost sick with nervousness as he tried the lock, but when the door opened, he felt little relief. The hallway was empty. He turned right and started to walk, and there was still no-one there. He passed a balcony, passed an intersection… Still no-one.

They've gone, he thought. "Don't be stupid," he told himself. "There's a big city for people to get lost in, and most of them will be in bed by now, anyway."

But I need to see them, he thought. Not alone. Not alone.

He thought about the mess hall. Not there, his mind whimpered. Too much. Too many.

He thought about McKay, but there would be questions, and far too many words. Instead, his feet made their way towards Ronon's room. Just to pass it, he thought. To see if I can hear him. To see if he's there.

He paused at Ronon's door. He wanted to move on, but couldn't quite bring himself to do so. The door opened, and he felt nothing – no embarrassment, no relief. "Sheppard." Ronon was dressed, and held an unsheathed knife in his hand. "Thought I heard someone."

Sheppard had hardly ever gone into Ronon's room. Ronon nodded at him now, giving him permission. Ronon sat down on the floor, and resumed the sharpening of his knife. Another nod, and Sheppard found himself sitting on the edge of Ronon's bed, beneath a picture of triumph.

Perhaps it was because he was so tired, that he asked it. Perhaps it was because he was still half in the grip of the dream. "How did you manage," he asked, "being alone all that time?"

Ronon raised the blade and studied it, then put it down. "Had something to fight," he said. "I started every day determined to stay alive, and to kill Wraith." He picked up the knife again. "They thought they were hunting me, but I turned it around. I was hunting them."

Sheppard let out a breath.

"It was different with you," Ronon said. "They took away all your weapons and took away anything you could fight. I'd have gone crazy inside of a week."

"You think I'm crazy?"

Ronon shook his head, but didn't answer. Instead, he said, "Could have gone crazy myself, looking for you. We just kept coming up short, against failure. That's why we had to leave Atlantis to look for you. People like you and me, we need something to fight. It kills us when we can't see an enemy."

He thought of Afghanistan, and how he had fought against orders, when there was no enemy to fight. He thought about the awfulness of that white room, with footsteps walking past endlessly, but never presenting him with the simplicity of pain.

But, "McKay, too," was all he said. "He doesn't look like a fighter, but he can't bear to be useless."

"McKay, too," Ronon said, "and Teyla. Perhaps all of us. Perhaps that's why we're here, because we're only really alive when we have a cause to fight."

"Maybe," Sheppard said. He felt his eyelids growing heavy.

"When I first got here," Ronon said quietly, "I used to sleep on the floor. I couldn't get used to a bed. I used to come back to my room, sometimes, when the noise got too loud. But sometimes I'd get up in the night and sleep outside, just so I could hear people."

Sheppard knew better than to look at Ronon. He looked away, but then his body must have taken over, because the next thing he knew, it was morning.

"Doesn't matter," Ronon said, before he could apologise. "Like I said, I'm used to sleeping on the floor."

Sheppard stretched. He felt better, he realised, and for the first time in days, he couldn't remember his dreams.

"I know what will make you feel even better." Ronon was sitting up, propped up on one elbow, and his eyes were glistening and intense.

He thought he knew what it was.

"They took away your ability to fight," Ronon said. "Take it back. They're still out there. Carter's just waiting for you to give the word."

End of chapter ten