Summary – What Rodney saw and why. One sided McShep, very angsty. Bad Rodney, kinda. Tag for Progeny (3x05) so spoilers
Rating – PG
Disclaimer – I don't own them, their creators do
XanaduIt actually made sense that he would be the one to give in, to break, to strike a deal…
But it wasn't even that, he'd agreed with his eyes open and no coercion except the promise they'd given him. Making an offer the second he realised what they were and what they were going to do.
Knowledge was far easier to take if it was freely given, after all.
So he'd proposed a deal.
Information (that they would take anyway) in exchange for perfection and the promise that he could just stay there, happily locked inside his mind forever.
Even if the others ever escaped they would never know what he'd done. Hell, he'd probably be treated as a hero when they got back to Atlantis.
Eventually he might have even forgotten that it wasn't real.
He could live out the rest of his life in a perfect world and even if he never forgothe would have at least been happy there which was more than he could say for the real world.
But they'd broken their word.
He didn't know why he was even surprised but when he'd woken up in the cell all he'd felt was total betrayal and devastation.
Because they'd given him something that he'd coveted for what seemed like forever but knew he'd never have and then they'd taken it away.
And he couldn't even talk about it, he couldn't tell them, couldn't remember.
Could never explain how he knew what it felt like to hear John laugh with him, to see that smile directed solely at him. To feel John's body next to his.
Because then they'd know and he couldn't live with it if John felt as disgusted with him as he undoubtedly would if Rodney told him what they'd made him see…
If Rodney told him what he'd chosen to see.
But besides, even if he was interested, John deserved better than a man who would betray his people for nothing more than simple selfish desire.
Deserved better than a man who would do it again in a heartbeat for just one more second of that perfection, even with the knowledge that it would one day be taken away.
Fin
A Xanadu is a perfect imaginary world, I thought it fitted.
