Disclaimer: I do not own anything… especially not my insanity. I'll use it though (but just for fun)…

Author's note: You will notice that I have avoided the actions that lead to the consequences. It is not only because I am not all that skilled at writing action scenes. I am an aftermath of violence lover. For me that is the meaty, entertaining portion. Perhaps, that is why Reservoir Dogs is among my favourite films… (PS This was written a few years ago, whether that has any bearing, I don't know.)

WARNING: PROFANITY AND/OR POSSIBLY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE AHEAD...

A few days later…

"I heard there was an injured warrior here," a female voice said, attracting the pair of inmates' attention. A small bedraggled woman stood outside the bars of their cave-cell, sandwiched in between a pair of burly guards. They unlocked the door and she shuffled in, clasping a large purse that was uncannily similar to a 19th century carpetbag.

The door was shut with a rusty squeaking of hinges as she knelt down beside the wounded man. McKay simply stared at her wide-eyed from his position kneeling on the other side of the colonel, holding a piece of his own sleeve to the bloody gash across the man's torso. She didn't look like she had lived too many years, but her worn features informed him that those she had seen were not easy ones. Her hair was a mousy sort of brown, frizzy and knotted with various beads and occult tokens embedded within its depths. Her clothes were equally devoid of colour from years of kneeling on the sandy, dirty floors, and darkened with the dried blood of countless patients. What particularly attracted Rodney's attention, though, were the bright stains of a more vivid red spread in blotches across her clothes, and forming a splatter pattern across her left cheek.

"Let's see what we have," she said, pulling McKay's hand away from the wound. He moved to grab her hand but she slapped his other hand away, to which he responded in kind. It deescalated into a slapping fight that only ceased when the injured party interrupted.

"What the hell's going on here?" John barked, having regained consciousness to see McKay in a sissy hand-swatting fight with a rather unkempt-looking woman that conjured images of the Crazy Cat Lady that terrorized the street where he grew up. You never wanted to lose your Frisbee in that yard, crazy old coot. Except, this woman was apparently younger than himself.

"Why don't you ask this psycho-who are you anyway?"

"I am Estanatl-ehi, the healer for those condemned to the caves. And if you would let me, I can help your friend," she replied calmly.

"What?!" McKay snapped disgustedly. "Look at you! How unsanitary would that be? When was the last time you bathed?!"

"Rodney!" Sheppard called the other man on his tendency to be severely offensive. Although from what he could see of the woman, he wasn't too sure about letting her poke around at his open-wound. Then again, it couldn't be any worse than leaving it as it was. He had already passed out once from blood loss or pain, he wasn't sure. Maybe she had something to quell the hurt. "I don't think I have much of a choice, unless you know where the nearest hospital is located or have figured out how to get Beckett to make house-calls to cave prisons…"

McKay shrugged it off, lifting his hands up in the air and backing up a few inches while mumbling under his breath. "Fine. It's your funeral…"

The healer-woman nodded her head in acknowledgement of the concession then turned to rummage around in her carpet bag for a few moments. The clinking of glass could be heard as she searched its contents. She pulled out a decently-sized clear bottle of equally transparent liquid. When she removed the stopper from the top, the odor burned Rodney's nose and made his eyes water, forcing him to turn away. When he dared to look, she was rubbing her hands together, her miraculously clean hands. Well, maybe not miraculously…the liquid had smelled intensely reminiscent of harsh, industrial-strength cleansers.

She then proceeded to remove the blood-soaked scrap from where it covered John's torso and lifted his black shirt, exposing the slashed flesh. Rodney half-expected blood to start spouting out Tarantino-fashion, for that's what it had seemed like to him when they had first thrown the injured colonel back into the cell. He could still identify the small clots of blood that had soaked into the sand-laden floor, cementing the grains together. But instead of turning into a human fountain, the blood, like it had done with the sand, had made an attempt to clot around the wound.

"Hmph," Sheppard winced as she wiped pools of syrupy, coagulating blood away from the injury. The wound was a slice, sustained when he didn't jump back quite fast enough from the swinging blade of his opponent's sword. The sharp weapon had hit him right below the twelfth rib, splitting open his flesh from his left side almost to the middle of his stomach, leaving behind a six inch long gash which started out rather deep and ended shallow.

"Doesn't look like it was deep enough to damage any of his insides," Estantl-ehi informed McKay. In her experience, the patient was generally too delirious to hold any sort of conversation with.

"Well, that's a big relief, Estella," John said sarcastically through gritted teeth. The healer looked surprised, but only for a moment before she smiled at her patient.

"Eh-stan-tul Eh-hee," she corrected him upon the pronunciation of her name.

"So, could you get to the part where you fix this," he urged. "I've got things to do."

"As you wish..." She once again searched through her bag, removing various items that made McKay both curious and cringe. He had oft accused Beckett of being a voodoo doctor, but this chick definitely made the medic seem like the casual dabbler in the darker arts. Among the items removed from the Felix-the-Cat style bag, McKay recognized a needle and some sort of thread. He hoped for Sheppard's sake one of those bottles held an anesthetic.

"You're going to stitch the wound closed with that?" McKay ridiculed the archaic technology. She pulled out a cylindrical item that proved to be a lighter and heated the curved needle over it. "Well, I guess at least it's sterile…"

"You'll have to hold him down," she informed Rodney. He nervously looked to the injured man. They exchanged displeased grimaces. "I don't have anything to give him for the pain."

She began the task of threading the obviously over-used, worn out needle. Rodney found himself squinting, trying to determine exactly what the string was made of. It just didn't look right. "What is that you're going to sew him up with?"

"Chetak sinew," she replied without looking up.

"What is that? Cat gut?!"

"No. Chetak sinew. It's strong and pliable. It will hold the flesh together without breaking." She finally looked up, her task of threading the needle completed. "Did I not ask you to hold him down? His shoulders…there!"

Rodney was too grossed out to give her a snide remark, instead doing as she asked. He gave a questioning look to his friend before placing his hands on the 'patient's' shoulders. With a reassuring nod of his head, John gave his consent. If this was going to hurt half as bad as he anticipated, they would need more than Rodney to restrain him.

The healer leaned in, so that in addition to Rodney's worried face, he saw her grimy but genial features greeting him. "Ready?"

"No," he responded. "But do it!"

John clenched his teeth and his fists in anticipation of the first tiny prick, which rapidly turned into a stabbing pain as the needle was forced into his already stinging flesh. He ground his teeth against the agony, low guttural sounds emerging from deep within his throat. The intensity of the pain subsided a fraction, and he released the breath he realized he had been holding, his chest heaving.

As the needle reentered his body, he felt all of his muscles involuntarily tense. The world became blurry and he squeezed his eyes shut. The visual confusion was only compounding his nausea, but the pain, the extreme pain was far beyond anything he had felt before. Again and again the needle bore its way through his flesh. The blood pounded in his ears and he lashed out at the sand-covered floor with his fists. He tried to prevent himself from writhing, knowing it would only make the procedure more painful, disrupting the needle's intended course.

At least, he hoped she was taking the most efficient route with the godforsaken torture device. It felt more like she was using a butterknife, or a fucking spoon to stitch him up. She probably left the needle dull on purpose, the sadistic bitch! She probably got her jollies from watching the already-maimed twist around in agony, screaming out in pain, pleading for relief!

John cursed the 'healer' woman, swearing revenge for the torture she was inflicting upon him. If he didn't know deep down that it was for his own good, had witnessed the far-worse consequences of infection before, he probably would've lashed out at her right then. Of course he was in no condition-

"Argh!" Sheppard cried out, finally unable to contain his vocalization to deep within his throat. He instinctively started at the particularly more extreme flash of pain, knocking McKay off from him, his body automatically trying to curl up into the fetal position to protect itself.

"Hold him down!" Estantl-ehi called to Rodney. The scientist quickly pushed John back to the ground, once again leaning on his shoulders. The healer woman had moved quickly, pinning his lower body down by kneeling on his legs. She wasn't heavy but the pressure of her bony shins digging into his thighs got his attention. He panted heavily. It still smarted like a son of bitch, but he at least was able to overcome his instinctual reaction to being hurt.

"You're lucky, yamandea. The needle was not driven any further into you," she informed John. He didn't dare open his eyes for fear of vertigo despite the fact that he was laying completely flat-out upon the ground, but he knew she was giving him that disturbingly pleased smile. DAMN HER!! This was not amusing on any counts. "The wound is deep here. I am going to have to give you some inside stitches."

If those were the kind that caused the needle to pass deeper into the tender flesh, burrowing like a cold steely maggot, John was not happy about the information. However, he had little time to ponder how much more agonizing it would be before she was already driving the curved metal spar into him. And no matter how much it hurt, making his teeth grind against one another and sending multicolored sparks across his vision, the far more disturbing sensation was the thread-cat-gut-whatever moving through the skin and meat of his belly as she tugged the two edges of the wound together. And that smarted too, like the irritated tissue of a blister when you popped it and the upper layer met the lower in a stinging embrace. It was just like that only a thousand times worse…

It was like a giant paper cut, far worse than a puncture. If he had been stabbed straight-on, then she would've been finished stitching him up by now. Although, there would probably have been damaged organs, and that was never-oh-god-why-didn't-he-just-let-the-bastard-slice-him-in-two-it-would-have-been-over-with! John kicked his leg as far as he could move it with the crazy bitch still kneeling on his thighs, digging his heel into the sandy floor, crushing the grains beneath his foot, cursing them in jealousy. They passed through their entire existence without living, without feeling pain, simply eroding and degrading until they were nothing but microscopic particles. Damn them!

Damn this! Didn't his brain get the point already? Enough with the agony! His nerves had done their job, informing him that his tissue was being damaged, and he obviously wasn't going to do anything about it! Couldn't they just call it quits? No! They had to continue to scream their messages, causing his entire stomach to be engulfed by an overwhelming burning sensation, and the rest of him to ache from the sustained tension in his quivering muscles.

"There." The current person-he-hated-the-most-in-two-galaxies' voice broke through his manically wandering mind, which was trying to find purchase anywhere but in reality. "Halfway done."

"Halfway?!" John somehow managed to croak out with his teeth still clenched. He had to go through all of that again?! Someone was going to pay for this! He wasn't sure exactly who at the moment, but what was certain was that someone would pay! Provided that he lived…

Rodney McKay desperately fought the urge to close his eyes, look away, faint or play dead. He knew his friend needed him, but all the blood and gore was getting to him. If he had eaten anytime recently, he probably would've lost his lunch. Maybe it was selfish of him while his friend was obviously in severe agony, but he couldn't help but consider the nightmares he was going to have over the scene. The crazy, dirty healer-lady, if you could call her that, steadily and unaffectedly placing stitches into human flesh, as its owner cried out in pain, the wound sporadically bleeding and coagulating into a sticky iron-stinking mess, and all the while she was humming some eerie alien tune. Yes, Rodney would not be sleeping soundly for a very long time.

The resistance he felt beneath the palms of his hands eased, alerting the scientist's attention downward. Realizing that the colonel's head had lolled inanimately to the side, panic overcame him. He shook his friend frantically by the shoulders. There was no response.

"He's dead! You killed him!" he shouted at the crazy woman who continued to stitch the wound close.

"He's not dead," she corrected the hysterical scientist. She checked to make sure the colonel's chest was still rising and falling, just to be sure. "His mind just couldn't take the pain anymore. He lost consciousness.

"You're friend was very brave. He lasted longer than most," Estantl-ehi informed McKay as she finished the last few stitches that would close the gory gash. "But it makes my work easier if he is not awake."

A/N: Was it gory enough? Are you wondering where the plot went? (It should reappear eventually…maybe… Okay, I might need some encouragement on that point.)