So ... started off as a drabble, as simple, pure procrastination and quickly mutated into a two-horned beast. Experimental language was used to explore Rodney's mindset here, so I'm not sure if it works or comes off terribly.

Title: Machinations in Eternity Minor / (a piece of two parts).
Pairing:John/Rodney
Rating:R.
Wordcount: ~ 6000
Summary:Rodney is experimented upon. John is tortured. Or is it the other way around? They both go a little insane, each in their own way.

"And there was – Sheppard – the name exploding into his brain, eyes blown, and drenched in colours, the colours of death and rage and hate, blood both human crimson and alien rot, all black and bulbous purple."

Warnings: Non-graphic dubious consent, enforced drug use, torture.

Part 2 is an outside perspective of the aftermath, and has aspects that tie into the AU universe started in Error, Error: Deviation. However, you don’t need to have read that to understand the second part.

The first part can also be a stand-alone, so skip to the bottom after part one to read the (very short) ‘Coda’ if you wish to read it as such.

Now, story:




-

He heard the screams before anything else.

Slowly the blackness receded, and the swirling, poisonous flashes of colour resolved into the strangely familiar surroundings of the cube-like room.

Rodney didn’t know how long he’d been kept there, imprisoned amidst the python-like wiring and bright red, flaring violet, ocean blue, burning silver, searing gold walls that shifted and breathed around him.

It was a timeless, torturous vortex of a room, wherein every surface was a screen and every screen had streams and reams of numbers, symbols and patterns that inexorably led to orgasmic, cosmic conclusions of infinite proportions.

It was addictive, all the maelstroms and upthrusting solutions, shattering through the euphoria of eureka and into a desperate obsession, a hungry need for the oh-so-gorgeous, dangerously pure science.

Somehow they, whatever they were, had needed a particular kind of mind, and it had been Rodney’s mind, Rodney’s quicksilver, flashing, jubilant mind used to meld into the machines, into the very room itself.

Had he slept? He didn’t know, couldn’t know, as if a dream had invaded his entire life, spilling out words and symbols and zeros to the point of (fivebetasymptomatictrillionoverEsquareddelta) drunken saturation of exotic sciences and strange faces, until suddenly one day he had woken up, snapped out of the delirium, and found himself curled up in the centre of the room.

It was the screams that had woken him.

They had arrived on the plant and the skies had been black as night and pure white long grass waved softly in the breeze, glowing like the moon that the skies were missing.

The parameters of his inclusive consciousness was not – he did not – could not – he wanted to - know what had happened to … to … He frowned, mind reeling on its axis.

Faces swam amid the alien equations still conquering his thoughts; caramel silk skin and knowing forgiving furious smiles, battle scarred soul and running motion body, and, and, muscles rippling beneath tan skin, harsh breath and harsher mouth, mocking tongue and laughing-burning eyes.

But no names, and even now, the faces slipped, turned lopsided, and oh, oh the alpha equality sliced through the cerebral cortex, splashing the sense-memory and Rodney’s breath tore at his throat as the ascendant beauty of the chain-over-sequential algorithm spanned his existence scorching rough flesh from gross soul.

Mind. Cracking.

The screams.

Louder, more violent, ever more desperate, degenerate arpeggios of pain, coming closer and closer and closer. His eyes widening, the oxygenating organ thumping a rhythm of unconstitutional rapidity.

Rodney. He whispered the name out loud to himself, then again, drawing out the vowels.

‘Rodney. Rooood-neeeey.’

Self-identification. That, that he did posses within memory. It was very important, self-knowledge, it assumed significance in the development of the mind into a conscious pattern of specific electrical impulses that could guide and nurture the equations into what they required.

So it had remained.

He pushed himself off the velvet-smooth floor and glanced down, blue eyes glittering in a distant curiosity.
His hands were bleeding. There, puncture wounds at the base of the palms when he turned them over, skin threaded with midnight-blue veins, radiating outward from the holes.

He looked about himself.

At the floor around him.

The python-wires, lithe and writhing, were everywhere, and they came together, the closer they were to his body, wrapped around one another into two incestuous, throbbing tubes, one on either side of him.
Clothed in his blood, spangled in gore.

Bright red handprints flared against the walls, against those living screens, and oh god, words were falling into his mouth, words like, bio-technology and chemical atypical mutations and electronic impulse driven networks and oh god, oh god, not living wraith technology, not Ancient sentient genetic integration but something else, something …

Faceless.

Memory returned, a sense memory, of mere moments ago.

He had been … connected. Body in cohesion with the machine.

His mind out of time and space and love, falling forever through the engines and turns of sparking wires and spinning wheels.

The machine, machine, ship, machine, in a vacuum of orbit above spherical bodies, and somehow he knew, somehow he sang, and his song led the shiplivingmachinethrivingship through machinations of false life, forever it seemed, till amid the forests of impulse and this zero and that dash and burn the sinking water he had stumbled across an image.

-

Cage, in a cage, and He burned with unholy light, bleeding crimson human blood, turned away from the front, back open, spilling the heat-energy of life, and white-clad men with droplets of red accoutrements flashed pain again and again, electrical whips of jagged edges and lovelustwantneedhatelovedespairlovefury.

Needles, needles everywhere, pumping chemicals and the substances of madness into the broken bloodstreams of the man, and rage scoured Rodney’s mind of science.

Tearing the snakes from his flesh, the twisting, agonized wires of frozen time, with heathotblood chasing them down, gravity, false force god that it is, bowing Rodney’s head, pushing him down, following the blood line, and flinging his hands out, slamming into screens and walls and telling them, ordering them.

‘Release him.’

And then dying the death of the mind, falling to sleep in the middle of the cube.

-

The screams.

He could hear them now, could remember the voices of strange, white-clad walking moving manifestations. Remembered red eyes staring, the human – human, they had seemed human, and Rodney had thought he had ceased being shocked by the depths of cruelty humanity could delve to, when he had still possessed a working Rodney-mind.

He remembered pale hands taking notes, thought of silver screens and monitoring devices, implantations of numbers directly to the skin and strange voices now raised in their dying swansongs.

Then a wall was cracking, tearing asunder, the red giving way to black, peeling and bursting outward.

And there was – Sheppard – the name exploding into his brain, eyes blown, drenched in colours, the colours of death and rage and hate, blood both human crimson and alien rot, all black and bulbous purple.

For a moment, Sheppard did not move, he did not come forward, did not cleave to fallen Rodney, rather, he stood, trembling, barefoot, eyes black pits of merciless rage.

Then Rodney must have made a sound, some sound, and perhaps he was even attempting to speak Sheppard’s name, his hands raised off the ground like an offering, blood overflowing from his palms and the torn whisper escaped him.

And Sheppard seemed to break, making an abortive step forward; and he looked at Rodney with something like despair.

Like the sky falling, Rodney remembered.

-
-

The Tribe Elder had given then the address, promising that the people, though secretive, possessed technology and sciences (the man had called it magicks, and Rodney had scoffed, and John had painfully stepped onto Rodney’s foot and Teyla had taken over and Ronon had smirked while stroking his gun) beyond his ken.

They had gone to this planet and found black skies and white grass like moonlight.

Then painful pinpricks, like glass beneath the skin, and sleep, black, dark, blessed sleep.

They had awoken, each tied to a pillar of black stone, at the edge of a perfect circle of flat black dust within the long wild grass that glowed like moonlight.

Three of them. John was gone.

Fire burned from low torches, set at careful intervals around the circle, and slowly Rodney’s eyes became accustomed to the flickering darkness.

Men and women and children lounged around the outside of the circle, bare chested, all, even the women, and, Rodney had noticed, the chord that had, of everything struck at him, were the pants.

Complex pants. With pockets and seams and tailored designs, of soft cloth worked with a perfection familiar from Earth and unheard of in Pegasus.

Torsos of barbarians, painted in spirals and sigils. The pants of a society at a technological par with Earth. A conundrum.

‘Zai-Hamnoch.’

The whisper came from Teyla, looking more unsettled than she had the first time a wraith took control of her mind.

He looked across at her, opening his mouth to demand an explanation.

‘They are a myth, more so than even the Ancestors and older than any story I have ever heard. They …’ She seemed to consider her words carefully, eyes flickering out to the people watching.

‘They are said to have no concept of what it is to be human, they delight in primal actions and require blood sacrifice to their god.’

‘Oh.’ Rodney turned his head back to watch the crowd with the icy-clench of fear in his gut and a lop-sided mouth.

‘Wonderful.’

-

Hours, it must have been at least five hours later that the drums began.

A heavy, beating throb that seemed to speak of death and only dark things.

The crowd had swelled over time, drinking a strange swill that permeated the entire area with the smell of heady spices and musk, and now they came to their feet, eyes glazed and ecstatic.

When they brought John, he was drugged, high out of his mind, bursting with a barely restrained violence, bounding in the centre of his escort, bare to the waist and painted in the same mesmerizing patterns as the others.

He strode through the crowd, and they parted for him, falling silent, but he didn’t seem to notice, focus intent upon the team, tied to their pillars.

Later, thinking of it, Rodney remembered the strange look to Teyla, the withdrawn, utterly at peace tone to her voice, the resignation in every line of her body. She had heard the stories, had not told Rodney, but she knew what would happen, and had been sure it would be her, and she had been prepared to endure.

But when they pushed John into the circle ringed by fire and madmen, he paced, feral and graceful, eyes burning with all the darkness he never let anyone see, all the rage, the deadly violence and the burning, vengeful despair with the world.

Rodney knew, Rodney had seen it.

But now was different, now John was barely human, functioning at an animalistic level that left no room for coherent thought.

And then hand were slipping around his wrists, the flicker of touch and his bonds were broken, and he was being pushed to his feet, breath coming fast - somehow they had known, known what John had wanted.

Rodney didn’t dare take his eyes off John, frozen by childish superstitions, instinctual drives – if you don’t move it won’t see you, it won’t hurt you.

Then John was moving, slinking forward, all deadly grace, lean muscles rippling in the firelight, the patterns on his skin, around his eyes and creeping down his neck moving in the shadows, and he seemed to be not so much human as … demonic.

He reached out a painted hand, tracing Rodney’s jawline tentatively, head tilted to one side as if memorizing every inch of Rodney’s face.

Rodney swallowed, and John’s eyes immediately flickered to his throat, teeth bared in a slow curl of the lips, and without meaning to, Rodney is whispering, pleading.

‘John. John, don’t do this, you don’t want to do this, you can fight this, you can –‘

And as if his voice had been a catalyst, John burst into violent movement, slamming him backwards, against the obsidian pillar, pressing his body against Rodney’s and painfully yanking his head back by the hair to expose his throat.

All the air left Rodney’s lungs and he could not hold back a moan when John mouthed his collarbone, tongue tracing the bones across, lips teasing, before biting down hard enough to draw blood on the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

‘Mine. ’ He growled, moving up to claim Rodney’s mouth, hot blood spilling from his tongue over Rodney’s lips, sliding into his mouth, grinding his hips mercilessly against him.

‘Oh god.’ Rodney gasped, and the pain spiralled into the bright fire of lust until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began, nausea and disgust welling underneath it all, an absolute denial of what was happening.

Then John was shoving him, flinging him around, so hard he fell to the ground, flat on his back, head slamming against the ground with sickening flashes of light twisting through his vision, a momentary loss of all awareness, then John appearing, falling to his knees over him, straddling him, coming out of the darkness like an avenging angel.

Vaguely, Rodney was aware of pleading in a female voice, of Teyla speaking, begging John to come back to sanity, of Ronon roaring, the crack whip of bonds drawn as tight as they would go and somehow he didn’t care because there was John, grasping his face and kissing him like there was never anything but them, with fires burning around them that could have been the apocalypse for all Rodney cared.

His shirt was tearing beneath John’s hands, and sick realization coursed through his veins, even as his hands joined John’s and he didn’t know if he was fighting or aiding this monstrosity.

Abruptly, like a dam breaking, skin was against skin, and John was burning hot, sliding, and sweat-slick against him as if dying of a fever.

Rodney, with his last gasp of coherence, reached upwards, dragging John’s head down, kissing him with all the terror, the fervour and desperate loathing of lust he possessed in that moment.

When he fell back, eyes meeting John’s, he thought, for an instant, it had worked, for John had frozen, utterly still, gazing down at Rodney as if seeing him for the first time.

Rodney stared up at him, and said, voice hard and cold and unforgiving.

‘Stop.’

When John recoiled, all animal hurt and wounded incomprehension, Rodney almost regretted it. Then that single moment of weakness passed and a wolf-like grin had John’s teeth glinting, utterly cruel and not at all in control of his sanity, and replied, as if it were the only word in the world:
‘Mine.’

-
-

Now, back in the present moment, mind fumbling through the flashing images, the copper-blood smells and shooting memory-pains, Rodney remembered.

He stared up at Sheppard, trembling and desperate in the ruined doorway, covered in blood and still half-mad off the drugs, yet still terrified, utterly unable to come any closer to the man he had raped.

Rodney’s mouth opened in a silent cry and tears pilled from his eyes, as he placed bleeding palms against the floor, pain shooting up his arms, and attempted to stand, wanting, needing Sheppard to know, to understand it wasn’t recrimination, it was desire.

And suddenly Sheppard was there, guiding him back to his knees, falling to the ground before Rodney, arms wrapped around him, pressing his face into Rodney’s chest, breath coming hoarse and ragged, words tumbling out.

‘Oh god, Rodney, what’ve I done? Everything, what I did, I hurt you and you, you tried to stop me and I wouldn’t even listen to you and you were in pain and Jesus Christ, I fucking, I – I – and nothing can ever change it, nothing, nothing, nothing will ever fix it and you, you…’ His voice was breaking tearing, even muffled against Rodney.

Gently, Rodney pushed Sheppard away, up, up and away, lifting him to look into eyes that burned with self-loathing, at a mouth twisted into an ugly mask of despair.

‘Sheppard.’ He spoke the words soft and unyielding. ‘Sheppard. I told you. I said these words to you. Do you remember? I said: ‘I let you do this.’

And suddenly Sheppard was furious, backing away from him, tumbling backwards with all the grace he could never lose, no matter how lost or stunned.

He was trembling, on his hands and knees, eyes accusing.

‘Don’t you dare forgive me.’ He spat, the words flailing the air between them, and Rodney’s mouth crooked, even while his mind traced the theoretical arcs of self-condemnation in the pattern of sonic alter-radiative waves.

‘I forgave you before it even happened.'

And Sheppard was silent. Sheppard was like no one else Rodney had ever known because his mind was flexible, his mind adapted, and his emotions were like fluid, always changing, yet never forgetting. Because Sheppard abandoned his stream of disgustragehatredoftheselfandneverforgiven and Sheppard said this:

‘Prove it.’ And his voice growled, a challenge, all disbelief and blind hope; the drugs pumping adrenaline and destroying inhibition and because of course, Sheppard was, if nothing else, a possessive motherfucker.
Rodney did so the only way he could think of.

He crawled forward, palms in agony, and Sheppard did not move, face a clarion of searing shock and awe.
Rodney leant forward and Rodney kissed John.

It was almost nothing, a light touch of the lips, a warm breath passing between them, eyes open all the way, staring at each other, then Rodney withdrew.

Sheppard, a wild kind of glee kindling in his eyes, threw himself forward, after Rodney, tumbling the both of them backward in a manner both reminiscent of and completely counter to that terrible night.

Laughing, a boyish grin clambering its way across his face, Sheppard fell over Rodney, eyes sparkling, and rained kisses down his neck, unshaven jaw rasping against Rodney’s skin.

Rodney felt like grumbling, felt like hollering out a vain complaint, but was distracted by the fleeting wings that clashed behind his eyes, two strands of a heretofore unrequited physical relationship clashing together on a simple Cartesian plane.

‘The E-minor string crossing with electrical impulses roughly equivalent to that of an electrical storm in a high pressure circumstance may, in some cases, lead to an unforseen outcome of the jubilant sigil.’

John’s head had come up, and by the time Rodney had finished absently murmuring the unconscious remnant of the abstract chaos-equation from the living wires a strange expression was on his face, one that Rodney did not immediately recognize.

He smiled crookedly up at John, tilting his head.

‘What?’

John’s forehead furrowed.

‘Do you realize what … Do you remember what you just said?’

Rodney raised his eyebrows in oblivious contentment, enjoying the feel of John resting atop of him.
‘What do you mean? That was just the logical conclusion to the Jubilee Conundrum.’

The expression on John’s face resolved itself in Rodney’s mind. It was something very close to panic.

‘Rodney.’ The name came choked and strangled out of John’s throat. ‘There is no Jubilee Conundrum … that was not logic.’ John’s eyes were very wide, and Rodney enjoyed himself for a nanosecond by watching the way in which the play of the reflected spectrum caused false-flares of kaleidoscopic images.

‘Rodney!’

John was shaking him and Rodney frowned, reaching up a hand to rest on John’s thrumming chest.
‘No, no, no, the Jubilee Conundrum is a part of the ship’s heart, see?’ He tapped a finger lightly over John’s heart.

For a moment John said nothing, then a deep rage clouded his senses, overcoming the vestiges of soberness he had managed to take control of through the haze of the foreign drugs they had pumped into him.
‘They. What’ve they done to you? ’

-
-

When they took John and Rodney away, Rodney had been broken, bleeding and torn, and Teyla’s ears were still ringing with the sound of his screams. John had been limp, knocked out by the barbarians after he had viciously mauled five of them who had attempted to get at him and Rodney.

Ronon, beside her, was taut, pulled so tightly against his bends, with tendons snapping out of his neck, that she worried he might seriously damage himself. He had yelled himself hoarse with threats a while ago, but his eyes still promised bloody murder.

She did not know where they had taken John and Rodney, but close to an hour after they had disappeared, she glimpsed a bright red steam of light on the horizon somewhat reminiscent of a an Asgard or Wraith culling beam. She assumed that the technology the traitorous tribesman on the first planet – and in her mind she planned a bleak future for such a man – did indeed exist, and had been used to transport both John and Rodney to a ship in orbit.

If they were to attempt a rescue, puddlejumpers would be required.

After that night, they did not see another living being. They were left, tied to their pillars, subject and sacrifice to the elements.

Their knives had been taken, and it took three days before Ronon finally managed to work his way loose of the bonds.

Another day wasted when both of them had collapsed, suffering extreme exhaustion the instant they fell through the gate to Atlantis, administered sedatives without conscious knowledge. Ronon had nearly maimed Beckett when he finally awoke and Teyla had been so close to blindly letting him do so.

When they finally reached the planet, three puddlejumper strong, with marines and medical supplies on hand, an immense, burning object was plunging through the heavens.

It landed lightly enough, a tulip-shaped ship of gargantuan proportions, pulsing grotesquely with rose-dawn-glow and dark violet veins.

The sheath between two overlapping petals slid open with the dry-slither of a snake shedding its skin, and John and Rodney stumbled out, covered in blood, and Teyla could not tell which of them was supporting the other.
When they tried to treat John he burned her with his spite and caused even Ronon to back down when he spoke with ice-cold eyes and refused to leave Rodney’s side, despite the deep, oozing tears in his skin and delirious fever-pitch temperature.

She and Ronon had exchanged glances, unsure of what to do considering what had taken place upon the planet’s surface, but Rodney moaned, face ashen pale from blood-loss, and called out ’Sheppard’, blindly grasping the air till John took his hand, so they let it be, for now.

-
-
-
-
Part 2
-
-

The Atlantis mission had been moved into deep Black Operations, to a level so highly classified that even the IOA believed the city had been forced to self-destruct after Replicators had invaded and murdered Weir when she and her team had returned in a futile attempt to single-handedly take back the city.

Despite the international nature of the expedition, most of the original members had chosen to continue on Atlantis. They were all brilliant, outcasts who were too intelligent for their own good, and had come to identify more closely with Atlantis than their respective countries.

That Atlantis was officially under US military control did not rankle as it might, with Dr. Rodney McKay and the promoted Colonel Sheppard sharing administrative power, and the fact of existing in a separate galaxy did much to alleviate any over-bearing influence the US command might have.

However, inspections were sent regularly, if much more rarely than usual for such a significant base of operations, and this was n large part due to the technological progress Dr. McKay’s science team was making and sending back through the Stargate.

What went unknown by the brass back on Earth was that McKay was just barely sending them the tips of the massive icebergs of discovery he was making. Just enough to satisfy them and keep them from interfering with Atlantis’ true autonomy.

Such an inspection had arrived one day before Teyla and Ronon came stumbling through the gate, starved and burnt, suffering extreme exposure.

Lorne had, rather intelligently, holed up the contingent, which consisted of one Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter, two highly educated, top-secret military operatives, and the unexpected addition of General Jack O’Neill.

They were given comfortable quarters, which had been given the softly name of ‘Ambassadorial’ in reference to the imperialist encouragements of the mandates Atlantis had been receiving from their military ‘overlords’ (another of the many mocking nicknames) and were given no illusion of freedom to roam, with Atlantis-loyal marines posted outside their respective doors.

Three days later, they were summarily released, without so much as an official apology, though Lorne did explain the basic outlines of the emergency that had, quite clearly, required a clear chain of command without any undue outside influence adding to the confusion, and of course, they understood, didn't they?

The inspection mandates allowed for the previously forbidden freedom to roam Atlantis and observe the workings of the City objectively, as well as the requirement of conducting in-person interviews with leading staff.

Those had been completed, with the Atlanteans interviewed being just as reticent and note-perfect as expected, however, the two most important had yet to be completed. McKay was, ostensibly, still recovering in the infirmary, and Dr. Beckett had exercised his privileges as Chief Medical Officer and forbidden any interviews until he allowed it.

Sheppard was slightly more complex. Jack had seen him around the base, a dark, moving presence, charismatic and nigh untouchable by the ‘outsiders’. Whenever he got close to making actual contact with the man, someone would suddenly come up to him with an urgent question or pressing matter, and by the time he looked around again, Sheppard had disappeared.

Sam and the other two were encountering similar problems, and while at first Jack had thought he would be able to use his powerful representation of the Ancient gene to aid in exploring the City and discovering the things that the Atlanteans would prefer to keep hidden, he found the City sluggish and cold to the touch, slow to respond, like an elephant dragging it’s feet.

Sam was small and canny; she knew how to fade into the background and how to gauge the general feelings and opinions of a military base. She was particularly fascinated by what these intelligent, unusual and apparently loyal to the point of mutinous people really thought of their leaders, of Sheppard and McKay.

The snippets of overheard conversation, of associated body language and tones led her to these conclusions.

While Sheppard retained his laconic, casual mannerisms and sarcastic humour, this did nothing to alter the ever-increasing awe he seemed to inspire amid the general public.

His myth only seemed to grow, despite no apparent encouragement or awareness of such on his part. Stories became ever more fantastic, and the people seemed to have little doubt in Sheppard’s prowess in achieving mad, impossible victories.

The fact that he laughed and mocked and teased and smiled seemed to only cause the people to, paradoxically, both adore and be ever more wary of him in equal measures.

McKay inspired the same effect on people as ever – blatant irritation and irrational loathing, but this was tempered, incredibly, by the same kind of awe with which the people treated Sheppard.

The fact of his sheer brilliance, and its role in saving the lives of every Atlantean seemed to elevate him from annoyingly intelligent, arrogant scientist to beloved mad genius, who, despite being a universally irritating and grating presence, was tolerated fondly, with an undercurrent of deep respect.

Jack and Sam discussed this, and all the other curious dynamics of Atlantis late one night, and decided, spur of the moment, in an old-times spirit of devil-may-care impulse, to sneak into the infirmary to verify of McKay was really there, or holed up somewhere hiding from them.

-

When they silently entered the infirmary, it was lit only by the soft blue of the bubbling decorations and the beds were bathed in the waving, dappled glow.

Every bed was empty and pressed perfect except for two.

McKay was in deep sleep, his face utterly relaxed and content in a way it never was when he was conscious, hooked up to an intense-looking set of IVs.

That wasn’t what made Sam draw in a quick, silent breath and Jack raise his eyebrows in utter surprise.

Sheppard, the constant, enigmatic presence that led Atlantis through an incongruously brilliant combination of fear, strength, charisma, sarcasm and respect was seated beside McKay’s bed, stretched out across his torso, head resting carelessly against McKay’s stomach, with one arm draped possessively over him, the other loosely curled in the sheets.

He too, was hooked up to an IV on rollers, which Sheppard had evidently dragged from his bed over to McKay’s.

Sam had assumed they were both asleep, so when Sheppard lifted his head indolently, and rested his chin against his elbow, tilting an eyebrow mockingly, she was hard-pressed not to take a step back in surprise.

Sheppard smirked, not cruelly, but simply as if genuinely amused by their faces and not at all alarmed at being found draped possessively over another man by a – technically – superior officer.

Jack rocked back on his heels, clasping his hands in front of him.

‘Ah, good to see the two of you are doing well, just a routine check in … We’ll be off to bed now.’ He grinned hugely and facetiously, spinning on the ball of his toe.

Sam, watching Sheppard carefully, saw him tilt his head and make an odd flicker with the hand hanging loosely off the opposite side of McKay’s bed.

The infirmary door slid shut in Jack’s face, and he made a grimace, making as if to thump his palm into the door and halting at the last moment to pat at it resignedly, before turning back around to look at Sheppard appraisingly.

‘Yes?’

Sheppard uncurled from his position, standing swiftly and silently in a moment, moving toward them, hand trailing carelessly across the bed, across McKay.

Sam felt a shiver crawl down her spine at the mild look on his face.

‘Your reports to Earth, I … assume they will be satisfactory?’ Sheppard’s voice was low, rasping, as if his throat was recovering from hours of screaming. Sam recognized it; she remembered that tone from Jack after he had been rescued from Baal.

Sam lifted her chin, staring down the man walking so slowly toward them.

‘Frankly, I have serious doubts about the reliability of Atlantis and its obedience to the chain of command. All signs indicate the growth of a separatist movement that would be highly troubling and damaging to your autonomy if word of it got to our superiors.’

Beside her, Jack’s face was deadly serious, an uncommon enough event that even Sam was caught off guard.
‘Which is why we will make sure that it doesn’t. Right, Sam?’ He tilted his head to her, the familiar glimmer of sardonic humour returning.

She nodded her head.

‘Yes sir.’

‘See, we like what we see here, Sheppard, and as far as I can tell, the governing of this place is a hell of a lot less corrupt than anything back in the Milky Way. So…’

Sam grinned widely.

‘Have at it, Colonel.’

Sheppard had frozen, eyes unnerving, then his face relaxed into an answering grin.

‘Well I’ll do my very best, General.’ He drawled, crossing his arms, and cocking his head meaningfully.

Behind them, the infirmary door slid open.

Sam wasn’t sure what would have happened if Sheppard hadn’t believed them, but believe them he did, for the very next day they were allowed back through the Stargate with nary a hesitation or bag check.

When she turned to wave goodbye to Sheppard, standing on the balcony, arms braced on the railing, he was grinning wolfishly, and McKay had somehow appeared next to him, leaning back against the railing, murmuring something to him that had Sheppard grinning wolfishly.

Rodney glanced over his shoulder, and caught Sam’s eye.

He winked smugly, and she walked through the gate feeling very much as she, as if all four of them had spent the entire trip as part of a huge, eminently amusing game that everyone but they had been aware of.

Later, when they were reporting to the Chiefs of Staff directly, Jack said this:
‘Honestly? I highly doubt we could make the Atlantis Expedition do something they didn’t want to do.’

Sam said this:
‘As long as you don’t try to, we will continue reaping the benefits. The minute they feel truly threatened by you, we will lose their allegiance.’

They asked:
‘What is your assessment of the risk of leaving the control over Atlantis in the hands of Sheppard and McKay?’

She had begun to answer, but Jack beat her to it.
‘Sheppard literally has Atlantis under his sway. Both the people and the City itself.’

Sam said:
‘You could try to nuke it, but you would fail, and I would highly recommend against such a course of action. Antagonizing them is both futile and dangerous. We can gain so much from them. The risk of a possible future mutiny is acceptable against the technological gains, and, realistically, very low so long as they are allowed to believe they maintain autonomy.’

Jack, after Sam had left, told them this:
‘I would recommend placing a contingency operative within the city in case a doomsday protocol is required.’

After Jack had left, one informed the other:
‘We have one in place. A sleeper.'

'Good. Let Atlantis be, for now. Watch how the dice fall out. Then we'll see.'

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CODA

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‘Ever since what happened you never call me John anymore. Always Sheppard.’
A toneless statement.

‘Really? I hadn’t noticed. Huh, I guess I do. It … just feels natural, like it fits somehow.’ Distracted, trying to evade this particular confrontation.

‘You never forgave me. Never will.’
In flat, unyielding despair.

‘That’s not true.’
Fervent, eyes on fire.

‘Look at me. Rodney. What do you see when you look at me?’
Demanding, shoving violently at him, needing...

‘Tell me Rodney. Give me a goddamn answer!’
Terrified, needing to break through the distance, the moving, speaking silence.

‘I see… I see kaleidoscopes in your eyes. Maddening, terrifying things. I see a man. I see a god. I see rape. I see torture. I see lust and broken things.’

Softly spoken, with his mouth everywhere in between the whispers that curled in Sheppard’s gut and bled through his heart. Mouth kissing, breathing, pressing against painful scars etched into his skin and mind.

‘Stop. God, Rodney, just stop. You don’t have to, you can’t keep doing this, keep…’

‘Sheppard. I have no choice. There is no choice. So maybe I am still a little insane. That doesn’t mean you have the right, or, if you want to be totally honest with yourself, even the inclination to stop this.’

‘After what happened, still you … It’s fucked, it’s all screwed to hell, all twisted up and gone off the deep end somehow and we can’t - I can’t - control it, but I should because you, you were damaged and Rodney it’s so goddamned wrong.’

‘I know. But you were damaged too. I can’t help it. And you can’t either.’

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