Chapter Four

On a planet called Dorav, a year before McKay was poisoned on Sey for being smarter than everyone else, the entire team, which included a mechanical engineer named Mercer, was captured and all sorts of terrible things had happened to them. They were captured because the High Mater had decided that he could not live without taking advantage of McKay's knowledge and skills. They had been taken while attempting to dial the gate home, always the saddest occasion for a kidnapping…so close to safety.

And because he had been stolen, when the High Mater could have simply asked nicely, McKay had refused to participate in anything the High Mater had planned. He would not fix their broken particle beam accelerator or the leaking fusion facility. He wasn't going to drop a dime on Newtonian physics or even describe his persistent belief in the co-existent perfection and chaos of the universe.

The Doravans tried tempting him with pleasure and, when that didn't work, they tried persuading him with pain. They were unaware that McKay had been tortured in the past and had learned a thing or two about resisting.

"Stubborn little troll," he heard Teyla say, affectionately, as he came to hours later in the cell that the team shared.

"The hell?" He heard Sheppard's shocked tone.

"I believe that it is making the rounds in Atlantis this week in reference to Dr. McKay. Last week it was…author?…maniac?"

"Authoritarian egomaniac," Ronon supplied.

"Wha' hap'n?" McKay sputtered.

"Yes, that was it. Authoritarian egomaniac."

"'m dyin'. Oh, my head!"

"Colonel Sheppard, what is an authoritarian egomaniac?"

"It's a fancy way of saying he's an asshole."

There was a pause. Then, "Oh," Teyla said. "I would never call him that."

McKay felt Teyla wrap her arm around his shoulders, lift him a little and place a cup of water against his lips. He drank without opening his eyes, but he knew that Teyla was smiling and he didn't want to give himself away unless he had to, didn't want to smile in spite of himself.

The worst part of their captivity on Dorav involved the age-old practice of encouraging self-sacrifice in order to save others. The High Mater had McKay brought to a dimly lit, closet-sized room, with a window to another, larger room taking up almost an entire wall. He was made to sit on a chair in the center of this tiny room and forced to watch while his teammates were tortured.

"You see what we have placed on the Colonel's finger?" asked the Mater's first in command. The Colonel sported an object similar in size and shape to a thimble, tied to his right index finger. Then the Colonel's hands were secured to the chair on which he sat, which itself was bolted to the floor. "This device implants memories of the battlefield, of tragedy and terror and evisceration and pain. It is quite effective in eliciting cooperation from those on whom we use it. And it is going to bring us your cooperation, as well."

With that, the Mater's second powered up the unit and that was when Sheppard gritted his teeth and rocked his head to and fro and suffered beyond anything that McKay had ever witnessed before.

Sheppard obviously knew that he was being watched and by whom. He had told McKay once that it seemed like everyone in the entire galaxy knew how to get his geek to cooperate. McKay hadn't argued with him about it then, and his psyche felt ground down, now, pulverized under the weight of the unseen horrors he imagined his friend was living through.

"McKay!" Sheppard shouted, and the physicist watched him trying to get the words out. "McKay, you asshole! Don't…tell…them…anything! Do…do you hear?"

And McKay was so…happy? Not happy. Relieved? When Sheppard said this, because he was about ready to just talk and talk and talk. He was going tell them about Einstein and tell them about Euclid and Oppenheimer and talk and talk and talk until his mouth was dry and they let his friends go.

Sheppard's session lasted an eternity. Ronon's did, as well, except that Ronon was so creepily quiet about it. The Runner took the memories of others and practically smiled because they were nothing compared with what he'd seen once the Wraith had come to his world, nothing compared with the memories that tortured him every night when he lit the candle for his dead wife and his dead friends and when he prayed his short but heartfelt prayer for the safety and protection of his new comrades.

"I do this each night when we are not off world," he'd told McKay. And the doctor had had some trouble getting his mind around something so thoughtful.

After Mercer, came Teyla, his sister, his beautiful friend.

"Not this," McKay said, his face going slack with dread. "Stop…no…" He tried to justify himself. "My commander has ordered me to remain silent. Don't…" and he'd looked through the window, as Teyla was secured to the chair, and as the wretched clip was placed on her finger.

Sheppard had told him, told him.

He pressed his hands on the window, letting his sweating palms deposit a filmy moisture on the glass. She was strong; she could take it. Teyla would want him to follow orders. She would want him to be as strong as he could be, although he had no idea how strong that was.

The clip glowed and Teyla threw back her head and clamped her eyes closed as someone else's death claimed her, as someone else's loss emptied her, as someone else's life—perhaps a child's—was ended by her own hands. Sheppard had cried; Ronon had not. Mercer, a pale, slide-rule type like McKay, had made a lot of noise. He'd vomited, wet himself and then, thankfully, passed out. McKay didn't want to know what Teyla was going to do.

His hands were free. The chair on which he had been sitting was not bolted to the floor. He wasn't so helpless after all. Soon he had the chair raised over his head and was battering it against the window, which didn't break but flexed and bowed and rattled loudly. He tore his arms around, repeatedly bringing the chair to connect with the window, until he felt his rotator cuffs screaming and his elbows felt like glass shards had been shoved into them. Teyla heard all of this noise; she knew that McKay was there and that he was trying to get to her.

By the time the Mater's men entered McKay's observation room and rendered him unconscious with a blow to the head, Teyla was laughing as loudly as she could, yelling "Rodney, you authoritarian egomaniac! Tell them nothing!"

OoOoO

On Sey, a year later, King Teyla awoke from her nap in her soft, high bed, and remembered something about the man she had ordered killed that afternoon, about his body and about the time—imagined, of course—when she had known him before.

These thoughts disturbed her, so much so that she climbed out of bed and went to the window. She replayed seeing the cart dip over the hill. The moon hung in the night sky as a silvery crescent, and an emptiness opened up within her.

TBC...