AN: Sorry for the delay, and just a small format issue, it won't let me put in E equals mc squared like it did in ms word, so, well, you all know the equation. Rest mass equation, where rest mass energy equals mass times the speed of light squared .
6.
"No," shouted Sheppard. "I'm not seeing the shrink!"
McKay folded his arms, staring down his friend, and teammate. "Do you want to stay locked up indefinitely?" he asked. "Because if you do," McKay gestured at the bars, and the sparse accommodations, "say the word, and we can move your belongings down here," McKay purposefully fixed his look on an area above Sheppard's cot. "You're poster might not stick to the bars, but you can always make a rug out of it."
Sheppard returned McKay's stare, and the angry silence grew. He'd been here for two days, not long in the grand scheme of things, but long enough to fall into deep thoughts, and frustration. "Don't be facetious," he finally said tiredly, breaking off the glare.
McKay followed Sheppard's move to his cot with his eyes, and watched the Colonel sit down. "I'm not. It's called realistic," he strode to the chair, and sat beside him, knowing it would ease the Colonel's nerves if he wasn't towering over him. "Until we know what they did to that head of yours, Caldwell isn't going to let you out." McKay muffled a small snort of mirth. "It's probably the smart thing to do, even if I don't like it." He knew what Sheppard's ability with the ATA tech was.
"You don't like it?" snapped Sheppard.
"That's right, I don't like it," retorted McKay. "And neither does Elizabeth, Carson, Teyla…" he broke off and caught Sheppard's gaze. "Do I need to go on?"
"No," Sheppard said. Game, set, match- he conceded to McKay. Point taken. But damn it, he had a thing with letting people get in his head. It was his; not fodder for files, and reports, and discussion.
McKay sighed. He'd willingly seen Heightmeyer, but he knew people had hang-ups. Everyone had hang-ups, regardless of how rational they were. "She's nice," he offered. "And discrete."
"What can she do?" Sheppard asked. Now that he was allowing McKay the opportunity to explain this idea he and Elizabeth had dreamt up, Sheppard wanted to know what it could accomplish. "How is seeing her going to find out what the Hoffans did to my brain?"
McKay steeled himself. This was the hard part. Getting him to listen was only the top layer of an extremely hard hole to dig. "Hypnosis." He let the word out like a carefully planted bomb, and waited for the explosion.
But there wasn't one. Sheppard was staring out into space. McKay leaned in, waving a hand in front of Sheppard's eyes. "Hello? I said, hypnosis."
Sheppard reached up, and stilled McKay's hand, still staring unfocused at nothing. "I heard you the first time," he replied dryly. "I'm thinking."
"Thinking, as in, 'why yes, McKay, that's a wonderful idea'?" he asked, cautiously. He didn't like it when people didn't react like he expected, and Sheppard had an annoying habit of doing that to him, a lot. He had always thought people could be quantified, little human energy packets of E mc2.
Sheppard chuckled. He knew McKay, knew what the man was thinking, as sure as if he'd spoken every thought and feeling out loud. "Maybe not quiet like that, but essentially."
McKay jumped to his feet, and jogged to the door, waving for the guard to let him out. He wasn't going to give Sheppard time to change his mind. "Great, I'll be right back," he said.
Sheppard nodded. "Not going anywhere," he said flatly, before speaking louder, "McKay," and when McKay paused he continued, "Only you and Heightmeyer, understand? No one else."
"Got it," acknowledged McKay, before hurrying out, off to retrieve the psychologist.
He left Sheppard wondering why he had asked for McKay to stay with him. He guessed he didn't want to be alone, vulnerable to someone else; someone that he didn't trust. He knew McKay would watch his back. McKay wouldn't let them do anything to him.
Carson muttered to himself as he prepped the slide. He slid it into the metal tongs on the microscope, and peered in. The slide blurred. He was so tired; he couldn't recall the last time he'd slept.
"You're going at it the wrong way," a soft voice to his left spoke.
Carson lifted his head, surprised. That voice…it couldn't be!
"Perna," he breathed, his hands clenched the edge of the table, as he turned his head, and looked at the woman standing there in her white lab coat, and her elegantly styled blonde hair. He swallowed, stunned by the hurt seeing her caused, even after all this time that had passed. "What are you…?"
"I'm helping you, silly," she chided. "You want to make an antidote," she walked over and looked at the slide. "It's a viral component spliced into a bacterium. Brilliant!" she smiled broadly at him. "I'm surprised you didn't think of this yourself."
Carson blinked, expecting the vision to disappear, but it remained. He didn't know what to do…so he did the only thing that made sense. "I did," he admitted to the apparition. "But I knew it would be dangerous." He moved behind her, leaning in, inhaling. He could almost swear he smelled her perfume. "Too dangerous," he repeated, logically knowing she wasn't really here.
"It is," she said, serious. "This was wrong. I didn't know, Carson."
He was becoming lost in her, this ghost. "Why are you here?" he asked thickly.
The smile again, like liquid sunshine. "I'm here to help you," she beamed.
"Maybe Colonel Sheppard isn't the only one in need of the psychologist," he muttered. But she was so real; the smell…he reached out; a touch, just one small touch…
"Doctor?"
The intrusion shook Carson. He jerked, startled. He snatched his hand back from the now empty air. "Yes?" he answered, his voice gruff.
A young nurse held out a slip of paper. "The latest results," she said, explaining her presence in the now deserted lab. It was late; hell, thought Carson tiredly, it was the next day; early then, not late.
He skimmed the results. Something in his mind responded, a viral component spliced into a bacterium, she'd said, and he had it. "I've got it!" he shouted exultantly.
The nurse looked at him worriedly. "Got what?" she asked, hesitant.
He grabbed her arm excitedly. "The cure…the antidote, vaccine…whatever you want to call it!" He realized he'd gripped the paper so tightly it was now crumpled in his hand. He took a deep breath, and smoothed it out on the surface of the table. "Thank you, Perna," he whispered. "Thank you."
"Breathe deeply, and focus only on my voice," Kate whispered softly. She watched as the Colonel's eyes seemed to accuse her of being behind the conspiracy that landed him in this situation. She'd asked if he felt comfortable in the chair, or if he'd prefer to lie on the bed. He'd told her he preferred to not be here at all, and then he'd chosen the bed by virtue of stretching out on it.
"You like to surf; picture yourself riding a wave, close your eyes, and focus on my voice…" she droned on, giving him instructions in monotones, and watched him slide into the hypnotic state.
"Now, Colonel Sheppard, I want you to think of a safe place," she instructed. "Tell me about the safe place."
McKay watched from his perch on a metal stool that had been brought in for him to sit on. "Is he already under?" he hissed, surprised at how fast it'd happened.
Kate frowned in his direction, but kept her attention on Sheppard, who was smiling. "I'm flying…" he said dreamily.
"Good," she said softly. "Now, I want you to go to your safe place when I tell you too, okay?"
"Okay," Sheppard answered dully, the smile drifting away as he lost hold of the flying sensation.
"We're going back to when you were on Hoff, do you remember that Colonel?"
Sheppard's brow knitted with concentration, but his eyes remained closed. "I remember," he answered. "They wouldn't listen. Did it anyway…Perna," he broke off and winced visibly. "My fault, told them Beckett would help."
McKay was beginning to rethink being here. He didn't figure that Sheppard would want him to know everything he kept inside.
"No, not the first time," Kate spoke gently. "The second time you went to Hoff, Colonel. Go back to that time."
"I don't want to go. Chancellor Druhin can't be trusted," said Sheppard. "I told Caldwell this is a mistake, but he won't listen."
"I know, but you went," Kate told him, "and I need you to remember what happened after you arrived. You left your belongings in your room, can you go from there?" She tried to steer him to the right memory.
Sheppard's eyes moved beneath his eyelids. "I told McKay I'd meet him at the dinner; told him I was tired, and was going to take a nap," he answered. "But Teyla knew I wanted to do some recon of the building. They're up to something, and I'm going to find out what," he shifted from past tense to present tense.
"I knew he was lying," accused McKay. A sharp look from Kate silenced any further outburst.
"Continue, Colonel…you left to look around?" she prompted.
"I didn't find anything. I was going to meet McKay, and go to the dinner, but…there's someone coming behind me!" Sheppard's voice rose as he experienced the moment of his abduction again. "They've blinded me, I can't see! Damn it, there's at least two, I think three, and I can't break free…"
"It's okay…you're fine, Colonel. They can't hurt you; it's only a memory. Pull back from what is happening, and tell me what you see…what is happening to Colonel Sheppard?" she separated his memories from him, hoping he could relate the events with a third person perspective.
Sheppard's forehead creased with pain. "They are taking him down. He fell to the ground…"
McKay's jaw tightened painfully.
"…cold on his arm…sharp…drugged…"
Kate drew a deep breath. "It's going to be okay," she reassured Sheppard, but she wasn't sure if it was for his benefit that she spoke those words. "What happened when you woke up?"
Sheppard's face eased from the pain of the abduction, to one of confusion. "I'm in a chair…I can't move; hands, feet, they've got me strapped to the chair…I don't know where I am," he moved back into the first person narrative.
"Is there anyone with you?"
Sheppard's head jerked negatively. "No…wait, someone is coming…I don't know him," he explained. "He's got a vial, he's telling me it's the galaxies salvation but he won't explain what that means."
Kate steeled her nerves, she had a hunch this was going to be where it started to get rough. She looked over and noticed McKay was watching Sheppard. She saw, for a moment, a glimpse inside the stand-offish man, saw how much this gruff Air Force soldier had come to mean to the sarcastic physicist. In her sessions with McKay, she had found that area to be the most protected, and the one that caused the most strain.
"I won't do what they want, and the man is angry," continued Sheppard, reminding Kate just why she was here.
She assured him, "They can't hurt you. You're here with us, this is just a memory."
Sheppard's hands moved restlessly against the blanket, but in a limited way, making her think he believed he couldn't move freely. She wished this wasn't necessary. "Tell me what they did next," she urged reluctantly.
"There's a machine…it's big. The man is telling me that he's sorry that they have to do this, but he's not really sorry," Sheppard recited the events, and with each word, his voice slipped lower and became more fearful. "It's going to hurt, the man says, and he's smiling."
Sheppard clutched the blanket, and his eyes snapped open. He looked towards McKay. "Tell them to stop. I don't want to be hurt," he pleaded.
McKay lurched forward, but a swift shake of Kate's head stilled his progress. He didn't know if Sheppard meant the Hoffans, or what they were doing now.
"Colonel, do you remember your safe place?" she worked hard to keep her voice soft, and neutral. "I want you to go there, right now," she ordered.
Sheppard's hands relaxed, and his eyes drifted shut again. The worry erased from his body, and both Kate and McKay knew he was flying.
McKay stood up, and looked at Kate frankly. "I can't do this…I've got to go," he admitted. "There's an experiment in the lab…"
Kate didn't move from her chair. "Sit down, Rodney," she ordered. "He trusted you enough to want you here, and you aren't going anywhere." She did fix an understanding smile on him. "He needs you, just now, when he was moments away from whatever terror they did to him, he looked for you-not me, but you." She knew McKay would see the important truth, and do the right thing.
The two were as unlikely a pair as ever there was. McKay was Sancho to Sheppard's Quixote, and then they'd swap, neither one content with the role life had given them. Maybe that's what drew them together; the irony of being more than what life had said they were, maybe that's the place where the friction between them alternated between insults and affection- when their roles flipped, and they needed a defense against the helter skelter world, because this wasn't what they were told they were. A soldier that was the scientific key, and a scientist becoming a soldier, and even saving the soldier's life by the gun in his hand.
McKay sat back down, stiffly, but down nonetheless. "How much more?" he asked. He wanted to help Sheppard, but this was proving to be more of an emotional toll than he'd realized when he agreed to stay.
"I don't think it'll be long now," she told him quietly. She addressed Sheppard, "Colonel?" she called.
"Mmmm?" Sheppard said.
"We've got to go back now. We need to know what those men did," she explained.
"I don't want to," Sheppard said wearily. "It's bad."
"I know it is," she soothed. "But we have to; after they brought in the machine, tell me what they did to Colonel Sheppard."
She slipped him into third person again, hoping he'd fall into the impersonal narration and distance himself from the actions that had been committed against him.
It didn't work. "They're shoving me in, and I'm fighting. God, no!" Sheppard shouted, again his muscles tensed, and his back arched off the bed. "They are strapping me down, and shoving me in this tube. I'm scared…it's humming, and lighting up…and…oh God!" Sheppard screamed, and his body convulsed.
Kate jumped up, along with McKay. "Get Beckett down here, stat!" hollered Kate.
Sheppard's body stilled under theirs, and he started talking. "Take the vial, dump the vial in the water supply. Come back and report on the situation when you have accomplished your mission." Sheppard recited the commands like he was reading a page off a book, except his voice was expressionless, dead. He continued, "The vial is nothing important. It is nothing important."
Kate and McKay exchanged startled looks. Kate relaxed her hold against Sheppard's legs. He had stopped moving entirely, and was deathly still. "Colonel, is that what you were to do?" she asked.
Sheppard's face was bathed in sweat, and his mouth contorted. He tried to talk but couldn't form words. McKay shook his head angrily at Kate. "Enough," he said. "We got what we needed."
Kate agreed. "Colonel, I want you to count back from three, and when you wake up, you'll remember everything we talked about, do you understand?"
Sheppard's head jerked slightly, affirming he did.
"Three, two, one…" she said, and he counted down in tandem.
Just as he became aware, the med team arrived. Kate and McKay stepped back, letting Beckett and the medic's access to Sheppard.
"He had a seizure of some kind," McKay told Beckett.
Beckett didn't look happy.
McKay watched them begin assessing Sheppard, and he couldn't help but think that some days it seemed like the universe was heaping the dung on them faster than they could crawl out. This was definitely one of those days.
