Space Pirates

Chapter 2

A/N: Scenes written in italics represent dreams/nightmares. OCCness and generally bizarre events are intended in those scenes. This is by far not the most questionable, for lack of better word, piece that I have written, but definitely, the most questionable one that I have posted so far. If it's totally off let me know.

Rodney slowly came awake and immediately wished he hadn't. The first sensation that penetrated the cotton wool that filled his head, was pain. His entire body ached before he had even had a chance to do so much as move a muscle. Even breathing hurt. The second thing he noticed was that he was not lying on one of the soft mattresses in the infirmary, but on hard ground. He could feel small piece of what were probably plants, pebbles and other thing you would find on the ground in a forest, digging into his back.

He had no idea what had happened and all he wanted to do was go back to sleep where he was safe from the pain which he only gotten more intense since he had woken up. He could feel that the answer to his question lurking just beneath the cotton wool that was clouding his mind at the moment, but he had a strong sense that he didn't want to know.. For the moment, he decided, he would just follow to pull of his body, which drew him back towards sleep again.

Rodney was just about the drift off again, when he felt a warm hand making contact with his shoulder. A surge of panic run through his body. Imagines flooded his mind. The shard of green glass flying through the air, slashing motion, clothes being torn, blood dripping to floor, the deadly rage on John's face. Instinctively he curled into a foetal position. His abused body protested against the action, sending unbearable pain through his nervous system.

McKay never heard himself scream, nor did he hear Teyla and Aiden calling his name, trying to calm him down. Their words didn't seem to reach him. His screaming died down when he passed out from the pain.

"I think we should let him rest a while before checking his injuries again." Aiden suggested.

"I agree." Teyla said. She had not failed to notice that when Rodney had curled up so suddenly he had aggravated the bleeding from some of the deeper stab wounds. But she also understood that they were dealing with more than physical injuries.

Teyla went over to check on the major. What she saw filled her with worry. He hadn't woken during what had just happened with Rodney even though he was less than three metres away. That and his shallow breaths and pale complexion indicated that he was unconscious, not merely asleep.

Aiden and Teyla had divided watch during the night between them and had tried to wake John several times during the night, but neither of them had been successful. Their hope that the major had escaped with a simple concussion dwindled with every hour that he spent unconscious.

Teyla stayed behind while Aiden went out to search for the nearest water source, as well as scouting possibilities for a safer and more sheltered campsite. Since there was no way they would leave their injured comrades behind, whoever left the campsite was on their own. While she was waiting Teyla pooled the meagre contents of the first aid kits that they carried in their packs. The actual med kit had been in the jumper. What they had wouldn't get them far. A few bandages, some gauze, band aids, but no medications or disinfectant of any kind.

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John was floating. He was finally free. He had escaped the cellar he had been locked up in. Now all that he had left to do was find his dreams and stay there forever. It had been so easy. He wondered why he hadn't done it before. He had had the glass shard for days. He could have slit his wrist and it would have been over. Nobody cared whether he lived or died. Well, his captors did, but only because they couldn't sell a dead body. He could have spared himself days of misery and night of trying to sleep while the cold penetrated every bone in his body. Waiting had been good for one thing, he had gotten his revenge. Revenge for all that had been done to him. By killing the guard, he had died as a free man. He mentally replayed the scene, needing to feel powerful again after having felt helpless for weeks. But this time something seemed wrong, for a second, the image of the guard flickered and morphed into a man from his dream. John shook his head. That couldn't be. It had been a guard. He had stared the man into the face and seen the hatred in eyes. He could never kill Rodney in cold blood. Even though he only existed in his dreams, Rodney was a friend. He was the closest friend that John had ever had. On the surface John socialized a lot, but he didn't let people come close. Rodney had come close.

John was standing on his favourite balcony on Atlantis. It was a warm day and a soft wind was blowing. It's a beautiful day and it is even more beautiful when both Rodney and John are off-duty. But John wasn't in the mood to enjoy the day. Something felt wrong and somehow he felt sad, without knowing why. So now he was staring out over the ocean, trying to figure out why. He only noticed Rodney when he was standing at his side.

"What are you brooding about?"

"It's thinking."

"So what are you thinking about?"

"Something is wrong. I don't know yet what it is."

"In case you have forgotten you took a good blow to the head on our last mission. I'm sure Beckett will tell you all about the week you spent in the infirmary annoying him and the nurses."

John didn't remember. He took a good look at Rodney. Suddenly Rodney was replaced by the guard he killed.

"No!" John screamed. The balcony suddenly seemed to tilt, knocking him off balance. He tried to grab the railing, but Rodney was faster and grabbed him, breaking his fall. The last thing he heard was Rodney yelling for a medical team.

John floated again. This was the first time his dreams have been like that. In his dreams, the world used to be all right.

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Teyla had just built a small fire to boil the water upon Aiden's return when a noise startled her and she turned around in the direction of her wounded friends. John's entire body gone rigid and stiff, while he's limbs were jerking violently. Teyla immediately abandoned her task and raced over to him, trying in vain to hold the stronger man down to prevent him from hurting himself even more. Time seemed to have slowed down while she fought against the force of the seizure. Her muscles started to ache and in spite of the cool air, she could feel the sweat on her forehead when the seizure eventually stopped. It seemed like the episode had lasted for hours, but probably only minutes had passed. Teyla sat back for a moment, getting her breathing back under control.

Aiden approached the campsite. It had taken longer than expected to find water. He had not dared to come any closer to the camp of the pirates and it had been almost an hour's walk before he had located another water source. The water didn't look very good. They would have to boil it in any case and even then it would be far from ideal. Fortunately he had encountered no enemies while he had been gone and it looked like the campsite had remained undetected as well.

"Sorry, it's quite far to the nearest river. The water isn't very good, I'm afraid."

"It will have to do." Teyla replied, taking the filled canteens from Aiden and pouring them into the field cooking pot and put it over the fire.

Aiden walked over to Rodney and John. As soon as the water was boiled and had cooled down again, they had to face to unpleasant task to trying to clean to worst of their wounds. Aiden hated the idea of having to hurt his friends, but they had no choice. They had to, infection was their biggest problem since they were stranded without any medications. Teyla interrupted his thoughts.

"John is unwell. He had what you call a seizure a while ago. I tried to keep him from harming himself further, but he was too strong for me." Teyla said in a grave tone.

Ford didn't know whether Teyla knew, but spelling it out wouldn't help anyone. A seizure was a very bad sign with a head injury. They could forget about the concussion theory. He should have realized it earlier what John had been planning to do. A second might have been enough to stop him. There was nothing they could do for him, if he had another seizure. John needed to be in the infirmary. It was a bitter irony, he would have survived being imprisoned in the cellar, but their rescue attempt had probably costs him his life. Aiden punched the ground in frustration.

"Anger will not help us." Teyla remarked. Aiden bit back an angry remark. The stoic acceptance of death and destruction of the Athosian would always be a mystery.

Teyla saw that Aiden needed time also, so she turned her attention towards the pot of water. It was done boiling by now. The particles of dirt had settles on the bottom of the pot, but she still wanted to filter the rest of the water. They were already short on bandages, hence she decided to sacrifice a part of her shirt. They would have to use their shirts as bandage material eventually anyways, as they were going to be on this planet for a while from the looks of it.

The rest of the morning was spent in silence. Aiden was wrapped up in his own guilt and anger about being unable to do anything for his team mates while Teyla didn't understand the attitude of her human comrade. Her people accepted the inevitable and knew how to live with it.

Teyla kept busy trying to get the water as pure as possible, boiling the filtered liquid once more, hoping the more particles would settles at the bottom of the pot. Aiden walked over to her.

"I'm going to check out the ruins by the camp. They were abandoned yesterday, I think it's safe there. It would for a better camp." He didn't mention that in order for the ruins to make a good campsite, the pirates needed to have left the planet.. Otherwise they'd be next door neighbours.

Teyla just nodded. It was dangerous, but they had no choice. If there were any supplies left in the ruins or the pirates abandoned tent village, they could use them. Their food wouldn't last forever. Testing the temperature of the boiled water, Teyla set out to clean the wounds of her friends.

John's head wound was messy, it started bleeding a bit again when she cleaned it, so she decided to leave it alone and bandaged it. The wounds on Johns hands, from where he had cut himself using the glass shard were mostly shallow and one cut looked bad and showed signs of infection. Again, she cleaned and bandaged it. The other cuts, she decided would heal on their own. Even the bad cut would eventually heal on its own. Her people didn't have very sophisticated medical skills and she had seen many people recover from quite sever injuries sustained in Wraith attacks.

Remembering what had happened before, she approached Rodney slowly, stopping a short distance from him.

"Rodney, you need to wake up! Rodney!"

Indeed Rodney opened his eyes briefly, but shut them again immediately again.

"Rodney, stay away. It's me, Teyla. It's important. You are safe here. Nobody is going to hurt you." She reassured him, recalling his earlier panic.

This time his eyes stayed open. Teyla moved forward, until she was sure that she was in his field of vision.

"How are you feeling?"

"Thirsty…everything…everything hurts." Rodney struggled with the words as the effort had him already out of breath..

"I'll get you something to drink. I'll be right back." Teyla said and went to fetch Rodney's canteen which still contained clean water from Atlantis. They had used it to collect all their definitely clean water, while having used their own empty canteens to collect water on the planet.

She handed Rodney the canteen and he took a few sips.

"Need to …eat. …Blood sugar…" Rodney managed, wheezing badly. Teyla understood what he meant and got a protein bar from Rodney backpack. Rodney barely finished half of it before he drifted of again. Even as Teyla started to strip him of his vest, jacket and tee-shirt , he didn't fully wake again. It was probably for the better as he still groaned semi-consciously and had fine tremors running through him. As Ford had already noticed the previous day, most of the stab wounds were minor, but the sheer number of them provided an enormous risk of infection. The two deepest stab wounds were one below his heart and one to his upper arm. They were still bleeding. Teyla tried to wrap them tightly, hoping that it would finally stop the bleeding. It wasn't a heavy flow of blood from the wounds. But even slow and steady would eventually lead to fatal blood loss. Most of the other stab wounds were already infected. She tried to clean them with water, hoping that it would reduce or at least delay the infection.

John tried to move but couldn't. His wrists and ankles were tied down to the mattress. He opened his eyes and found himself in the infirmary. It made sense, the last thing he remembered was passing out on the balcony. What did not make sense was that he was in restraints.

"You can calm down now or do you want to be sedated for another twenty-four hours?" Dr. Beckett threatened. John looked up at the man, expected him to be grinning, but his expression was dead serious. He had never seen Dr. Beckett with such a cold expression on his face. "You have ten minutes with Rodney. But if he agitates you, I won't hesitate to throw him out and order no more visitors for the rest of the week. Elisabeth also wants to talk to you."

John just nodded, unable to understand how is dream world had suddenly turned on him. Rodney, Rodney had to be on his side. He had to be his friend.

"John! How are you?" Rodney practically came running across the infirmary. "I've missed you sooo much. Haven't seen you for two days. Rodney came to a skittering halt at his bedside. Only now, John noticed that Rodney was carrying a bouquet of flowers. Very weird, very alien flowers. Rodney tossed the flowers on the nightstand and bent over to give John a long, very wet kiss on the cheek.

"What happened?" John asked bewildered. Everything was wrong. Rodney was nice to him, that was right, but this wasn't Rodney.

"I've been so worried. You collapsed on the balcony. Dr. Beckett said it had something to do with your head injury on our last mission. He didn't let me visit you until today. He only let Dr. Weir see you until now."

"You didn't miss much, I only woke up today. But Rodney, can you do me a favour and get Dr. Beckett?"

"Is something wrong?" Rodney frowned.

"No, no, I just want to ask him something. John hoped that he would have better luck confronting the doctor in company. Maybe Rodney too would notice that something was amiss. A minute later, Rodney reappeared with Dr. Beckett who looked very unnerved.

"Dr. Beckett, can you please tell me why it was necessary to restrain me?"

"You were unruly." The doctor responded curtly and already turned to leave.

"Because of what? Rodney told me that I hit my head!

"Yes! And you didn't let me visit him. I want to take him home!" Rodney joined in.

"Okay, you two are asking for it. Rodney you are leaving and I'm not going to see you here again for at least one week." Dr. Beckett grabbed Rodney by the shoulders and roughly pushed Rodney out the door. "And you", he approached John, "definitely need some more rest." In a quick gesture, Beckett stabbed him with a syringe.

"What the hell was that for?" John yelled as he was already starting to feel strangely heavy. Within seconds, he drifted off.

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Rodney didn't know how long he had been awake. It had to have been several hours. When he had woken up, it had still been afternoon or early even, judging by the daylight. At first he had been content lying on his back, not moving, just staying still to keep the pain at bay while his brain worked furiously. Like a puzzle, he had taken the pieces he had and had tried to put them back together. He remembered everything in perfect clarity until he had arrived on the planet. It started blurring from there. He remembered how he had felt. The mix of desperation, fear, and determination to do anything he could do to get John back. He had been willing to kill anyone how stood in his way as he had climbed down the steps to the basement. The basement had been dark and it had smelled of rotting wood. He was surprised that he recalled that much detail. Then his memory failed him. There were only shards of memory of what had happened next. He had struggled with John. "No," he mentally corrected himself, "struggled was the wrong word. They had fought. It had been a fight to the death. John had him overpowered so fast that he hadn't even stood a chance to draw his weapon. But the truth was he wouldn't have dared to use it. His aim wasn't too bad for someone who hadn't been using firearms until recently, but he would never have risked killing John. It couldn't have been him, John wouldn't never try to kill him. Yet he knew that he was injured. At that point, Rodney had decided to sit up.

It had been excruciating. His right arm was throbbing with pain and refused to obey the commands of his brain. He had to rely on his left arm and on his thankfully intact legs to push himself up. He tried to bite back the scream when he lifted his back marginally from the ground and pain exploded in his chest. In spite of his efforts a strangled yelp escaped him. Within seconds, those hands were back on him and a weight was pressing his legs to the ground.

Pain, more and more pain cursed through his body. It was as if his nerves were being set on fire. He twisted and turned, his thoughts having been reduced to the need to protecting himself from the pain. Rodney tried to roll away, but a heavy weight secured his legs to the ground. The shard slashed against his lower arms and blood dripped down onto him. Another blow deflected. He pushed up his knees, trying to shuck the weight off of him, but it didn't budge. His weapon, he needed his weapon. He kept on arm raised as the shard struck again. Higher this time. The sharp edge wasn't deflected but ripped through fabric and plunged into his upper arm. The underground room echoed with his screams. His left hand reached metal while precious blood escaped his body and his assailant continued his onslaught, slashing across his chest, but not deeply enough to cause more than a deep scratch. Bad move for his assailant, lucky move for him. His fingers tightened across the gun and in a swift movement he used the last bit of strength that he had left he aimed it straight at his assailant. Just has he was about the plunge down the shard of glass into his chest once more, Rodney pulled the trigger, hitting the other man in the chest at point black range. The explosion filled the room, making his ears ring. The assailant collapsed to the side as Rodney dropped the gun from his bloody hands. Rodney was on the verge of passing out himself as he turned his head, wanting to get a look at the first and hopefully last man he had been forced to kill. John's pale face stared at him in death. He was dead because Rodney had killed him.

As Rodney started fighting her, trying to push her away, Teyla realized the mistake she had made. She quickly backed off, but remained close enough for Rodney to hear her.

"No! Not you! I didn't mean to!" Rodney mumbled with closed eyes.

"Rodney, wake up! You are safe here. Nobody can harm you. It is just a dream!"

"I'm so sorry. It couldn't have been you!" Rodney didn't seem to have understood what she had said.

While Teyla didn't know what had happened between the three men in the underground prison, she knew that it had affected all of the severely. John was gravely injured, Aiden was unusually quiet and angry, and Rodney seemed to be haunted by nightmares and driven to panic every time he was touched by someone.

"Rodney, everyone is all right. Listen to me. We are all here. John, Aiden and me, we are all here." She reassured him, hoping that this would help quell whatever he was so afraid of.

Indeed, Rodney stopped mumbling inanely and lay still again. Teyla stayed at his side watching to make sure that he had indeed calmed down. It was only minutes before Rodney resumed his initial efforts to sit up. Knowing not to stop him this time, Teyla decided to help him by replacing the bundled up jacket under his head with his backpack to bring him into a more upright position.

TBC