Note: For those of you who noticed, I apologize for the super long delay in getting this chapter posted; a really busy vacation, procrastination and writer's block got in the way.

Acknowledgements: Thank you Amycat8733 for Beta reading this story and (among other things) catching some interesting typos.

Chapter 25

John finally got discharged after a tedious morning in the infirmary getting wounds assessed and re-bandaged, and being bombarded by streams of instructions from Beckett and Marie. He had to check in twice a day, in the morning and evening, abide with the prescribed pain medication and antibiotic regimens, eat and rest as much as possible. The key message was that he could spend the rest of his sick leave resting and recuperating in his own quarters. The thought of that helped him get through those hours without snapping at the next person who touched him.

The door swished open and John was greeted by the welcome sight of his tidy room. Someone had definitely dusted and swept the floor, leaving everything exactly where he had placed it over a week before. The Atlantis housekeeping staff were unsung heroes, in his opinion. He steered around the neatly made bed and headed for the solitary comfy chair. Next to it, his golf bag rested perched against the window sill. It would be a while before he could practice his swing but maybe he could work on using the putter with his left arm. You never knew when that type of skill would come in handy.

He propped against the back of the chair the memory cushion that Marie had given him to safeguard his still tender back. Then he held the sling still against his stomach while he cautiously lowered himself into the seat. He couldn't believe how tired he was from the short walk and transport jaunt from the infirmary to his quarters. He really hoped that it wouldn't take too long to get back into shape. A good night sleep would help too. Between the nightmares and infirmary noises, he hadn't gotten much rest since he had regained consciousness.

"John, are you certain that you do not need anything else?" said Teyla, his official escort out of the infirmary.

John was pretty sure that what Teyla wanted to really ask him was if he was going to be all right being left alone in his own room. He wondered about what precautions and concerns Carson had secretly shared with her. He didn't see them talk but he had no doubt that they had a conversation so that Carson could prep Teyla about what to expect from him. He didn't resent them; he just wished they weren't so convinced that it was so necessary. It's not as if he hadn't been tortured and imprisoned before, and gotten over it. He just wanted to lay to rest this latest incident and move on to the important stuff, like finding Rodney. Oh yeah, and also fighting the Wraith.

"Yes, Teyla, I'll be fine. I'll just relax here for a bit, maybe even take a nap." John smiled and held his features in a neutral expression under her scrutinizing gaze. "You go to your meeting with Woolsey. You know how he is about punctuality. I heard his lecture once and I really don't recommend it."

Teyla smiled while she glanced at the digital clock on the low dresser that sat against the wall next to his bed. "It is not yet time for me to go. " She placed on the bed the extra pillow that Marie had given her. "If you decide to sleep, would it not be more comfortable to lie on the bed instead of the chair?"

"Actually, this is the perfect chair for taking naps." John patted the arm rest like the back of an old friend. "With all their high-tech know-how, the Ancients never produced a piece of furniture that is as comfortable as this genuine American invention."

To demonstrate, he took his right arm out of the sling and pulled the extra-long handle of the recliner. The mechanism required minimal force so it didn't hurt—well, maybe just a twinge. The back tilted and the footrest rose, giving him a clear view of his running shoes. It felt weird to be wearing them instead of his usual boots. Despite the fact that he had on his usual black button-down shirt because a t-shirt would have been too hard to put on with his bum arm, the rest of his getup (sweatpants, no weapons) advertised his off-duty status.

Instead of putting his arm back in the sling, he laid it on the armrest. The sling was giving him a stiff neck and his elbow had started to complain about its immobilization. Sitting with his legs up was so much better than laying on a bed, which he had done way too much in the past few days. He was very glad that during their way too long stay on Earth, he had opted to furnish his room with a fancy recliner. Despite Rodney's insistence that plugging it into the Atlantis power grid would be no problem, he had decided against buying one with powered option because that seemed way too decadent and, from a practical side, the electrical components were likely to break down much more easily than the simple mechanical ones.

"Lazy boy is a good name for this cleverly designed chair," Teyla said, smiling.

She had just returned from placing his razor, toothbrush and other toiletries back in the bathroom. The previous evening, John had really gotten a kick out of Torren assisting Teyla in shaving his face. It reminded him of the few times when he was a little kid that his father had pretended to shave him too, removing the gobs of shaving cream that he had splattered on his face. Those were the happy days before his mother died.

Teyla placed a cup of water on the windowsill on the left of the chair and slid her hand over his forearm, squeezing it lightly. He felt her warmth through the fabric of his shirt sleeve. Irresistibly drawn to her, he wrapped his good arm around her hip in a wordless invitation. In response, she eased herself into his lap. His hand lingered on her lower back, where her top had risen above the waistband of the pants. The skin to skin contact was a balm to his troubled thoughts. Before, just the pressure of her weight would have started activity in his crotch. Now, nothing was happening down there. Nada, zilch, niente. He tried to believe himself as he chalked it up to the fact that his body still had ways to go before a full recovery.

"This is nice." He nuzzled the back of her neck, hoping that her sexy aroma would completely purge his lungs of the lingering imprint from Vernara's noxiously scented candles. "After Carson gives me the green light to use this arm, I'd like to show you some interesting ways to use this chair."

"I believe I would enjoy that very much." She caressed his jawline and moved her fingers through his hair before resting them lightly on the back of his neck.

He watched her to rememorize her lovely features and afraid that closing his eyes would trigger a flashback. His ongoing efforts to shove all those memories away in a safe corner of his mind where not working. Since he had regained consciousness, all sorts of things, mostly sounds and touches, unexpectedly zapped him back to some of the worst moments on Khamala Prime.

Gazing into the lustrous oak pools of her eyes, he leaned forward to kiss her. Their lips barely brushed before he stopped himself, pulling back to a safer distance. An unbidden reminder of where his mouth had been stopped him in his tracks.

"What is the matter?" Teyla said.

"Nothing, it's just that I haven't brushed my teeth yet." He plastered what he hoped was a reassuring grin on his face.

Teyla seemed on the verge of objecting but instead she said, "John, when you are ready, I hope that you will talk to me about what happened. I can see how difficult this has been on you. Maybe even harder than all the other terrible experiences you have previously gone through since you arrived in Pegasus."

"Yeah, a Wraith Queen hammering through my brain might have been a better option." This thought sounded much funnier when it had first popped into his head. He noticed a flicker of anger pass through her eyes before she smothered it. He wasn't sure if she was mad at him or at the whole situation.

"I for one am glad that you were not in the hands of the Wraith. You have already been unprecedentedly fortunate in escaping from them too many times in the past. Such good fortune should not be tested again," she said.

"I'm sorry. I know that in the great scope of things this should be trivial compared to being fed upon by Todd or one of his friends. It just doesn't feel that way."

"John, what happened to you was not trivial by any means. Please do not think that." Teyla rubbed his arm up and down, her hand stopping just above the bandages around his wrist.

"I don't really think that … I guess. It's just that I need to move on from this quickly. It happened. I killed those who did it and I escaped. Beckett and Keller fixed me up. End of story. I don't know why it's so hard for me to compartmentalize it, like other stuff." John clearly remembered how after he came back from his encounter with Todd, he had a few nightmares but nothing that affected how he acted outwardly with his team or others in Atlantis. His stoic façade lightened up with perfect doses of sarcasm had been spot on. Even the knowledge that others had witnessed his unspeakable pain and humiliation at being tied to a chair and gagged while a Wraith fed on him hadn't left him feeling as jittery and weak as he felt now.

Teyla stayed quiet while he scrambled to find a way to explain himself. This was doubly difficult since he didn't really understand all his mixed up emotions. His thoughts kept on leaping from one idea to its complete opposite. "I am used to resisting all kinds of interrogation techniques but what Vernara did was nothing like that. She didn't want any secret information from me. She just wanted to use me … my body to get herself off, over and over, and it took me way too long to find a way to stop her. There had to be something else I could have done."

With unexpected force, Teyla grasped his forehand and pulled it up to his line of sight. "Please listen. All the barely healing marks on your skin, and what is under this bandage and all the others on your body tell the story of how much you did to try to prevent this abuse." She gently placed his arm back down. "I know that I cannot stop you from reassessing your actions and decisions. All I ask is that when you do so, you make certain to weigh every alternative action against the fact that by doing what you did you made it out. If you had done one or more things differently, would you have been able to remain alive and fit enough to seize the opportunity to escape? You returning back here is what is important for yourself, me, Torren, everyone in Atlantis and Rodney too."

"You might not feel the same way if I tell you all that happened. The things I did." The softly spoken words fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

"Do not even think that," she said with an almost angry snap. She returned to her normal, kind cadence as she continued. "I know you, John, and I am certain that you did what you had to do to survive. What I would have done in the same situation. You know there is nothing that you need to keep hidden from me. I want to help you. Please allow me to do so."

Struck at the thought of Teyla being placed in the same type of situation, tied down by a male version of Vernara, made him feel sick. Just what he needed, another nightmare image to get out of his mind.

"I do want your help. I just need to sort some things out first." He looked at Teyla—unquestionably the love of his life—a beautiful, intelligent and unbelievably strong person who had already been exposed to so much sorrow and brutality. Should he really add to her burden? "You know that this chat we're going to have is going to be very unpleasant for both of us?"

"Yes, I do. As you will find the words to express yourself and release your burden, I will find the strength to listen. You cannot keep this inside you. You have already done that too much these past years. Doing so with this will only hurt you even more than she already did."

"Yeah, but …"

She shushed him with a finger touch to his lips. "No buts. Think about this, John. If it had been me, kidnapped and sexually assaulted before I managed to escape, would you have wanted me to keep everything bottled inside, eating away at my soul?"

"Of course not." What else could he say? That this was different because she was a woman, a female, the more typical victim of rape? Even he wasn't stupid enough or so completely lost in his maelstrom of second-guessing thoughts to make that argument. Searching the room, as if his furniture and possessions could provide a viable counter-argument, his eyes fell on the clock. "You're going to be late and I need to do the report for Woolsey."

She got off his lap. "Would you like me to stay with you while you record your report? I could reschedule the meeting. I am certain that Mr. Woolsey would understand."

"No, I need to do this by myself." He could see her skepticism. "Please Teyla. We'll talk later, I promise."

"After the meeting, I will come back here with Torren and then we can go to lunch together."

"That'll be nice."

"Do not forget to take your pain medications," she reminded him as she walked out.

After the door slid shut, John pulled out the digital recorder from the left pocket of his sweatpants. The small metallic case felt cool as he twirled it in his hand. He eyed the view from the window. The sky was crystal blue, unmarred by a single cloud—it looked perfectly beautiful except for the tell-tale high speed whirling of the propeller of the nearest recently installed anemometer—another brutally windy day on this ice planet. Wind chill minus who knew how many freeze-your-butt-off degrees. He sighed, recording his report while sitting outside on one of the far-flung docks was not going to be an option. He just had to bite the bullet and do it here. Now. Getting a mission report to Woolsey was an essential step to making his way back to the duty roster, even if with restrictions.

He resisted the temptation to start off with a suitably cynic Captain's log stardate entry. He doubted that Woolsey would appreciate it, despite a certain resemblance between him and Jean-Luc Picard. This was something that he and McKay would normally spend some quality time mulling over—he really missed the guy. When they got him back, they should really introduce Star Trek the Next Generation to Teyla and Ronon to get their opinion about the Jean-Luc similarity and their thoughts about their own respective alter egos, Deanna Troi and Worf. Focus, John, focus, he told himself.

He had to consult his PDA to figure out the correct date to state at the start of the report. This whole debacle had already taken him out from the search for McKay for nine days, four in captivity and five in the infirmary. Despite Teyla's pep talk, this realization flared up anger at Vernara and at himself for allowing it to happen and not stopping it sooner.

He took a deep breath and got started. He gave the briefest background of the meeting with the Coalition members that led to their visit to the market. That felt so long ago that he had to think hard to remember the name of the planet. Then he got into the meat of things.

"... An arrow struck me in the arm and before I had a chance to react, my body went numb and I lost consciousness. I woke up with my arms bound and gagged. I tried unsuccessfully to escape. The next time I woke up, I found myself very securely tied to a huge bed in a luxuriously furnished underground room. My weapons, boots and uniform were gone. My captors had left me in my underwear. The sole occupant of the room introduced herself as Lady Vernara Alkamade. Not the most rational of personalities, she was very angry at me for turning her down when she had made a pass at me at Chancellor Zarneon's gala three months ago. I barely remembered the encounter.

This may seem hard to believe but she said that she had me kidnapped to, to …"

He stopped himself from saying, fuck me to death. He paused the recording and took another deep breath. He let it out slowly, trying one of those breathing exercises that Teer and, more recently, Teyla had tried to teach him. He clutched the recorder, contemplating throwing it across the room. Maybe it was a good thing that he couldn't do this outside where the temptation to launch far it into the ocean would have been too great to resist.

More deep breaths. He just had to get through this by keeping it simple, avoiding crude words and staying detached. He turned on the recorder again and continued talking in a monotone, while staring at the snippet of sky visible from the window.

"Alkamade had me kidnapped and dragged across a bunch of stargates to be delivered to her for the sole purpose of her sexual entertainment. She had no intention of seducing me. She never questioned me about Atlantis or anything else about the expedition. I told her I wasn't interested and tried to reason with her. She cut my arm with her knife and threatened to flay me alive if I didn't stop arguing with her. By now firmly convinced that the woman was deranged I shut up, more or less. Expertly physically restrained, I couldn't stop her repeated sexual assault which she carried out with the aid of devices and products straight from a BDSM shop."

The sour taste of his partly digested breakfast rose in his mouth. He paused the recording again and got off the chair without putting down the footrest. Sharp twinges of pain in his arm and back reminded him that his body couldn't yet take such sudden motions. He went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. The reflection in the mirror looked haunted. He couldn't stop himself from obsessing about what he should have done differently.

He thought about what he had already recorded, worrying if he had said too much or too little. He hoped that Woolsey was not going to think that he had some first-hand knowledge of BDSM practices—he just couldn't come up with another way of saying that a part of his body was forced to repeatedly cooperate with Vernara against his will.

Determined to get this over with, he went back to the bedroom and grabbed the recorder. Instead of sitting in the recliner, he stood by the window leaning against the wall. He pressed the record button and plowed ahead.

"After she was done, she had her three personal guards tie my arms behind my back and blindfold me before taking me to a window-less cell. I was in no condition to fight them off and I could not escape the cell. I slept for a while. I don't really know how much time passed. Two guards brought me some food which, after debating the pros and cons, I decided to eat. As I was finishing the meal, the guards let a young woman named Kharla into the cell to change the dressing on my arm. Kharla told me that she was a bonded servant. After a little bit of prompting, she shared some basic information with me. She told me the name of the planet, Khamala Prime, and that it was midday. She said Alkamade went through one or two captives like me—bedroom companions she called them—a month. When she tired of them she either sold them off to offworlders or had them killed. Kharla also warned me that the food had been laced with cossan fruit, which turned out to be a super-strength prune.

I slept again and then I was sick for a while. The guards came back. They tied my arms, blindfolded and gagged me. They took me to a room and placed me in restraints which seemed to be attached to the floor and ceiling. A bunch of servants washed me. The guards took me back to Vernara's chambers and secured me to her bed again so that I could not move my arm and legs. During all of these transfers I had no opportunity to even attempt an escape.

Vernara had more sexual jollies at my expense. I hoped for a chance to a get a hold of the knife she kept strapped to her leg. Vernara took a break from sexual assault to whip me to teach me a lesson about… I don't remember what. She clearly enjoyed inflicting pain. After that she had Kharla come in to clean my wounds. I thought that somehow I could get her to help me get a hold of the knife. But Kharla was acting like a robot, obeying Vernara's commands without any emotion.

Vernara must have been on some kind of stimulant. She seemed insatiable. She resumed doing what she wanted with me and, after a while, ordered Kharla to join in by cutting into my back with her knife. I thought this might be the opportunity to get the weapon into my hands. Completely sure of her control over her servant, Vernara didn't care that I was whispering to Kharla to help me. This kind of thing went on until I finally managed to snap Kharla out of her hypnotized state or whatever it was. Please refer to Dr. Keller's report on Kharla's blood tests. Anyway, Kharla cut one of my hands free and slipped me the knife. I freed myself and killed Vernara. I had to kill two of her guards and incapacitate another during our escape. On the back way out of the Alkamade compound we found my weapons and tac vest. Kharla showed me the way to the stargate. I knocked out the watchman and we went through."

John knew perfectly well that his narrative left gaping holes. So be it. He had no intention of spelling out the humiliating ways he was restrained and exactly how he got hold of the knife.

The rest of the report flowed easily. After briefly backtracking to describe what he had learned about the layout of the Alkamade compound (it was practically a fortress), he listed the stargates they went through and reported the little he had learned about Kharla. He emphasized the point that he owed his life to her and that she definitely deserved any help they could provide to settle her into a new life.

He didn't know what else to say to wrap up the report. Nothing remotely useful came to mind as a recommendation or conclusion. Seriously, what could he possibly say? Don't turn down passes from rich creepy women? Find a way to hide a knife or other sharp weapon under your skin so you would be always armed, even after being stripped naked? Finally, in a stroke of rationality, he remembered to make some semi-astute observations about possible threats from the rest of the Alkamade family in case Woolsey's threats turned out not to be a sufficient deterrent.

After pressing the stop button, he placed the recorder on his desk. He felt exhausted but he was afraid to close his eyes and take a nap. He needed to forge on to take care of things so that he could get back to what passed for normality in Atlantis. Gulping down some water, he pondered whether he should make a copy of the recording to give to Robinson. Could her listening to the recording (while he was somewhere else) count as his first mandatory session with the psychologist? Probably not.

Footnote

Thank you for sticking with this story. I am trying to stay in-character, let me know if I stray or if you have any other comments or suggestions. In future chapters, would you like to see more of any particular character's view point?