Erm . . . one last fic for a brief goodbye
So, I'm really supposed to be figuring out how to FedEx my computer to the states instead of writing fic right now, but I sat down to make a note of this plotbunny and it just sort of came spilling out.
The fic I was going to write was supposed to be straight up hurt/comfort, with Rodney ending up with Teyla and John being angry and having conflicts with everyone, but then I got through a page and a half without giving Rodney any dialouge and decided hey . . . I'll write a fic where Rodney doesn't talk.
I'd really love it if one of the more hurt/comfort able people remixed this with all the requisite angst and drama and cuddling, but um . . . here it is.
Like Heisenberg, Looking In, Uncertain
How do you describe coming across the two people who mean the most to you in the world bloody and battered in a some dank, dark prison cell? Rodney doesn’t know, but he imagines it would include words like horrible, disgusting, burning, retching, tragic, impossible, concern, anger, daze.
But the only word he can think of is blood.
It’s all John’s; that much he can see. It runs down his legs in rivulets, pools itself in his seat, thick and still like a fresh coat of paint. It oozes from the bindings, clenched tight over his wrists, thick barbs digging deep into his flesh until Rodney can see through to the white glint of bone beneath. It wells up from gashes, from great craters where flesh used to be. It coats his hair, making it stick up at odd angles, nestles itself beneath his toes, seeps into the whites of his eyes, covers almost every inch of him and it’s all Rodney can do to not throw up then and there.
The only blood on Teyla is smears, fingerprints that would seal a court case on Earth (meaning lost somewhere in the pile of bodies Ronon has left in his wake). Her skin is bruised, but not broken, blood painted onto her hips and her cheeks and her perfect round breasts like fractals, like tattoos in some primitive ritual. Totem. She does not move to cover herself as they enter, flayed naked, eyes blank. She shivers and shakes, but does not look down at the assailant still fresh and smoking on the floor, cock still hanging out like a sausage, like a raw piece of meat, disgusting, rotting, unwanted.
Beside him, Ronon makes a sound, like a growl but soft somehow, plaintive. Rodney has heard it before, on Earth, dogs howling for a dead packmate, long and sad and feral. Rodney never cared much for dogs. He keeps his silence.
It is his commander that Ronon makes for first, not even stopping to check John’s pulse before he rips the blood cuffs off and hoists him over his shoulder, running up the stairs and for the jumper, where Beckett is waiting anxiously. John’s eyes were open beneath all the bruising and the swelling, but they didn’t see. God, they didn’t see.
Lorne steps forward now, and only now does Teyla flinch, looking past Lorne and into his shadow. It is the fear in her eyes that presses Rodney into action, shoving past Lorne to kneel at her side. “Teyla? Teyla . . . Teyla . . .” All he can say is her name, all other words are lost. But words are not what she needs, for she grabs for him, like the dying clutching on to the last raft of hope.
Her face is buried in his shoulder as he lifts her up. Even through the thick stench of blood, he can smell her. She always smells like Christmas, rich and woody and floral too, infused with cinnamon and nutmeg, and home.
<<<>>>
Teyla will not speak, but she doesn’t need to. There is only one relevant question. The rest can wait. Did they give anything away?
She shakes her head, and pulls Rodney in tighter. He has never thought of Teyla as feminine until now, no matter home many skirts she has worn, or how many times she has laughed that warm lilting giggle. Female, yes, because, hello, he has eyes, but feminine has always implied some sort of weakness to him, and before, the only weakness she had ever shown was a masculine one - pride.
Rodney holds her hand as the nurses clean her, helping her out of Rodney’s jacket and into a scrub top as they spread a light blue sheet over her legs, hiding Dr. Biro’s concerned face from her as she takes swabs, examines, presses. It is the same setup when people have babies, absent the screaming and the demands for painkillers. Teyla’s grip is soft in his hand, but still insistent. More than anything, the silence is consuming.
<<<>>>
Biro has offered the comfort of Teyla’s own quarters. Her physical injuries are minor. Heightmeyer wants her supervised, but it could be somewhere familiar.
Teyla just shakes here head, wide liquid eyes fixed on the door to the operating theater. Sheppard has been in there for five hours already, and Biro expects he will be there for several more.
Rodney would be making demands, harassing, annoying, pacing, determined to wheedle every fresh bit of news from the medical staff, if Teyla did make her way off her bed to slide down the wall beside him, resting her head on his shoulder before falling into still, exhausted sleep.
Rodney’s left buttock has gone numb and his shoulder and neck twinge with the uncomfortable position, but he sits with her until Nurse Perry comes out of the bio lab and sighs at them, helping Rodney lift a still-slumbering Teyla back into bed.
Rodney doesn’t know where Ronon has gone, but he’s too tired to mention it, appropriating another cot and curling up on it. He dreams of John’s hands, skimming across his own unblemished flesh, painting him and marking him with his own blood and a wicked smile.
<<<>>>
It isn’t until the debriefing the following morning that Rodney realizes that he hasn’t uttered a word in nearly twenty hours.
Lorne is the first to speak. He delivers his report more clipped and formal than Rodney has ever heard him, directly addressing the wall behind Elizabeth’s head.
“The operation went exactly as planned, Ma’am. We flew the puddlejumper through to the specified drop point outside the city walls, made it through the village with little resistance, penetrated the inner gates with two charges of C4. Ronon pointed a gun at the first servant we came across and he lead us right to them. Fifteen kills, Ma’am - all palace guard, plus the two interrogators.”
Elizabeth nods, looking uncomfortable with the stark formality of Lorne’s military best, even as Rodney is wishing it were more. He’s never wanted to destroy something before. Take apart, yes, but never obliterate.
Lorne continues, “Ronon grabbed Sheppard and returned to the puddlejumper. Teyla was . . . her injuries left her ambulatory, but in the essence of time, Dr. McKay carried her back to the jumper. They didn’t try to stop us.”
Elizabeth sighs. “Do we know what they wanted? Or why?”
“No,” Ronon says simply. “But I can go back there and find out.” There is something fierce in Ronon’s eyes, something that Rodney has never seen before, which is odd, because after two years serving together, you’d think Rodney would recognize all of Ronon’s various ferocious looks.
“No,” Elizabeth looks down at her hands. “I think it’s best we wait until Sheppard and Teyla are better able to answer that themselves. Do you have anything else to add?”
“For what they did to Sheppard, I should have killed them.”
Neither Rodney nor Lorne dares say ‘you did.’
They don’t talk about Teyla. No one wants to say it.
Elizabeth turns to Rodney. “Anything else?”
He shakes his head, unwilling to speak. For once, he agrees with Ronon’s ‘me no like, it go boom’ approach, but he’s not about to acknowledge it.
Carson is next up. He looks as exhausted as Rodney feels, dark circles under his eyes, shoulders hunched and gaze dulled by sadness. “Teyla’s . . . injuries were largely superficial. She has shown signs of shock and severe psychological trauma, but we’re mostly looking at bruising and a wee bit of tearing.” He doesn’t mention where. “Physically, my main concern is contamination, both from her assailants and from the copious amounts of the Colonel’s blood present. It is possible that it was used to . . . “ he gulps. “. . . Ease the process.”
Ronon stands up and walks out. Nobody stops him. Rodney himself, is trying too hard not to throw up to notice.
“And Colonel Sheppard?” Elizabeth asks. She hasn’t referred to him as John, not even once.
Carson’s eyes fall. He looks pale, ghost white, and his words are painted with regret, a burden greater even than protection falling heavily on his hunched shoulders. “The Colonel’s injuries were severe. As far as I can tell he was beaten, cut, and flogged with some sort of barbed instrument. Broken cheekbone, skull fracture, five cracked ribs, two broken. Right wrist and three of he fingers of his right hand, various cuts, contusions, internal bleeding. And . . . um . . . other damages.”
He doesn’t need to say it. Rodney and Lorne saw the mangled mess that was John’s genitals. Elizabeth doesn’t need to hear it in all its gross detail. They can protect her from that much at least.
<<<>>>
Rodney doesn’t want to talk to Heightmeyer about this. He doesn’t know where to start. Yes, he’s traumatized, but what right does he have to be when it’s John and Teyla who are suffering? He wasn’t raped or tortured or . . . he’s perfectly intact.
His biggest problem is how he’s supposed to deal with them, go on loving them when he can no longer relate. He can’t understand their experiences. He can’t know them. And even if he did, even if he found some sort of ridiculous parallel, went out and got raped or beaten up himself, he still wouldn’t understand, because he’s not a jaunty football-worshiping flyboy raised in a the loving lap of American military machismo or a busty alien warrior princess, leader since before the age Rodney even left the house. He can’t understand, and if he can’t, what good can he do, damnit?
“Rodney,” Heightmeyer says, handing him the paper bag she keeps on hand for their sessions. “Please calm down. Remember to breathe.”
“All you have to do,” she says, “is be there for them when they need you.”
Easy for her to say.
<<<>>>
When Rodney sneaks into the infirmary three days later, after leaving Teyla on the mainland with her people, John is sitting propped up against a mountain of pillows. One hand is casted, while the other idly stirs a bowl of soup. He’s a rainbow tapestry of bruises. Even his eyes are mottled, almost grey in the dull lighting of the infirmary.
“Hey,” he croaks, but does not smile.
Rodney pulls the curtains around them, ensconced in white. He doesn’t know what to say, so he presses his lips carefully to John’s. What he means is ‘I don’t care what Carson had to do. I still love you.’
John pushes him away. “I’m tired.”
<<<>>>
Rodney goes to visit John every day, tracking the map bruises as they fade. John spends a lot of time sleeping, and even more of it pleasantly blissed out on the best drugs Carson has to offer.
A week in they send him back into surgery for some sort of permanent shunt. When he comes out of it, his eyes are hard and when Rodney visits, he turns away.
<<<>>>
When he visits the mainland, Teyla is sitting in the middle of a field, allergens blooming around her, even tucked into intricately braided hair. Her smile is so warm when she sees him. A long time ago, he would have been dazzled by that smile or perhaps taken it for granted. But now, he feels it spiced with sadness.
She has not seen Kate Heightmeyer, and she will not see her. Rodney is glad for this. Teyla’s fierce independence is a variable he has come to count on.
‘Come,’ her eyes say as she takes his hand. They hike for what seems like hours through fields and over daisy-covered hills, up to a sparkling blue lakes nestled between two boulders.
Rodney has so many questions: how are you? What happened? Why? Will you be okay? But he doesn’t ask them. He just lets them fade into the cold blue of this vista, Teyla sitting cross-legged beside him, humming some alien tune. It echoes between the rocks like birdsong, couples calling out between themselves to mark the dawn.
<<<>>>
The second he hears the loud crash coming from the infirmary, Rodney knows that John is being a difficult patient. Of course he is. John hates pity and he hates being cooped up anywhere.
“Now, now, laddie, I know this is frustrating for you, but you have to be patient. You’re still weak, and you can’t risk infection. Please.”
“Carson, I need to get out of here,” John sighs, defeated. He is sitting at the doctor’s feet in a pile of hospital gown and bandaged limbs. “I can come back for wound checks. I’ll even do it in a wheelchair. Just let me go.”
His eyes meet Rodney’s. “Rodney can take care of me. Can’t you?”
Rodney’s too shocked by the bandages, by the mass of gauze he can spot beneath John’s hospital gown, to give a coherent answer, so he simply nods. He just wants to give John what he needs.
Carson gives an exasperated sigh. “Good luck to you, Rodney. I’ll get you his meds.”
“Thanks,” John whispers, pushing Rodney away when he tries to help him up.
<<<>>>
‘Back to the Future’ is playing on the laptop in front of them. Rodney can’t even bring himself to insult the pitiful excuse for science that is the 1980s, seeing how into it John is.
He just doesn’t know how to deal with John recently. What do you say to a guy who’s just lost his bits ‘n pieces? Especially when you used to be a . . . connoisseur of said bits ‘n pieces. He loves John, even though he’s not sure John ever loved him. The used to be fuck buddies. Now, he supposes they’re just buddies, especially with John accepting, but never contributing to Rodney’s hesitant kisses.
But John is still warm against him. Still solid, never delicate. So goddamned strong for dealing with this the way he is. Accepting it and somehow moving on.
“How’s Teyla?” John asks, when the credits roll. Other than this, he doesn’t ask anything of Rodney.
<<<>>>
It’s two months before Rodney realizes that Ronon hasn’t been to visit Teyla. He and John can often be found eating together in the commissary or taking hobbling walks around the inner perimeter of the control tower.
If Ronon is disturbed by his commanding officer’s lack of masculinity, he doesn’t let it show. In fact, Rodney would venture that the two are closer now than ever.
Rodney is in the middle of sorting out the puzzle of Ronon and Teyla when he overhears Elizabeth and John talking about it.
“Well, I could order him to go,” John says, quietly. His voice says ‘it’s not my problem.’ Which is odd, because, since when has John Sheppard not be fiercely territorial over all that he surveys?
“No, Colonel, you and I both know that ordering him won’t solve the problem.”
John’s voice seems to shrug. “He said that it is because she’s unclean.”
“And you don’t have a problem with this?” Here comes Elizabeth’s righteously moral rant, in feminist flavor.
“It’s Ronon. I can’t make him think anything he doesn’t want to think. He’ll come around. Just . . . I mean, I can’t even see her until Beckett’ll let me fly out to the mainland. When she comes back, I’m sure everything will be fine.
<<<>>>
Teyla, however, shows no intention of returning. When Rodney goes to visit her, she is planting grain or teaching he children some form of stick fighting or singing. She has the most beautiful untrained voice he has ever heard - light and clear and beautiful like the lake or the plains or the planet from space, pure and natural and so full of life.
Elizabeth worries that Teyla is damaged, that talking to Heightmeyer will somehow fix her, but Rodney knows that she is not broken.
<<<>>>
“Elizabeth asked me if I want to go back to Earth,” John says one day. He is sitting in the darkness of their now-shared quarters. It’s strangely liberating. Now that everyone knows that John no longer has the equipment that the military always seemed so concerned about, they’re perfectly willing to accept him living with another man, as if the danger was the sex and not this . . . whatever it is they have together. “There are surgeries, cosmetic or implants or something.”
“You . . .” Rodney begins, but John holds up his hand to stop him.
“I’m not going. I’m never going to get feeling back, or be able to have children. I’m needed here. It’s the only place where someone like me could be needed.”
That’s not exactly fair, but Rodney elects not to mention it.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to be with me . . . I don’t want your pity, Rodney. You can be with other people, do whatever you want. You don’t have to stay with me. Just, you know . . .”
Rodney silences him with a kiss.
<<<>>>
John refuses the hormone therapy just as he did the reconstructive surgery. His voice gets higher, from rough rumbling tenor to a melodic but empty alto. He loses weight in some places and gains it in others. His legs look less spindly nowadays, and his shoulders and arms no longer hide the narrow line of his body. Only the slight potbelly stops him from looking like a scarecrow.
His face is still fucking beautiful, moreso as some of the facial hair growth slows, letting him go more than a couple of hours without stubble. With the hair has gone some of the restless energy, the competitive drive. He’s not as strong, but he can sometimes drop Ronon now, hanging back, waiting calmly for his opportunity before using his intelligence to defeat the beast.
His relationship with Rodney has changed as well. They still tease each other mercilessly, deconstruct bad scifi movies and explore Ancient technology and laugh and joke and pretty much continue on boyishly as they always have.
But the undercurrent of insecurity has gone. Their jabs are no longer testing, jealous, possessive. John has found a sort of calm self-possession, a cool easiness that even his feet-on-the-dashboard command style never achieved.
Scarily, Rodney thinks that this might actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to John.
<<<>>>
On his next visit, the mainland is in full bloom of summer, and Teyla is giddy with it, jogging up the rough limestone of the path to their hidden mountain lake, with Rodney panting behind. She strips off her clothes without hesitation and dives right in. Rodney stands skeptically on the shore before she clambers out and wraps her naked body around him, moisture seeping through the smooth synthetic of his field gear.
Her lips are wide and wet in a smile and in a kiss.
A part of him hopes this means she has healed. Another part wonders if this is just another symptom, turning to the ‘white knight’ that rescued her.
“Teyla . . .” he pulls back, only succeeding in misbalancing himself enough for her to yank him into the cool waters of the lake.
She got water up his nose. Rape victim or no, that means she’s going to get dunked.
<<<>>>
As John’s limp dissipates and his physical therapy draws to a close, Rodney starts hearing more and more rumors, whispers, really.
Some servicemen have a problem with a dickless commander - as though they never saw that one coming. Others are worried that he will be pulled from command because it’s clearly a condition for a medical discharge.
But that all changes the day the Genii get a foothold in the city using some sort of Ancient invisibility shielding and their own version of the ATA gene therapy (protein injections that wear off after a week or so). John, using some new freakish ability to link himself to the internal sensors that he hasn’t even told Rodney about (which would mean sleeping on the couch if he didn’t just save their asses so spectacularly), kills 82 of them almost single-handedly.
After that, people don’t doubt his manliness, only perhaps his sanity.
<<<>>>
The next time Rodney goes to visit Teyla, they have sex. Teyla is soft and warm and curvy and so incredibly perfect that he’s practically crying afterwards. She kneels above him, riding him with a gentle rocking motion that’s both tantalizingly torturous and completely right.
There are a lot of questions that he should be asking, like should they be doing this? Why are they doing this? Is she ready for this? What about the rape? What about John? What about the team?
But silence has done them wonderfully thus far. Why stop when Teyla’s low keen writes masterpieces that men have searched for ages over?
<<<>>>
Teyla returns to Atlantis not long after. And the second she sets foot in the jumperbay, Ronon is rushing to her, embracing her and lifting her up of the ground.
“You’re back,” he proclaims.
And then Rodney realizes that of course someone like Ronon, tossed back into civilization after seven years, wouldn’t see ‘unclean’ as a permanent condition.
John just looks on them lazily, touching his forehead to Teyla’s when she approaches him.
“John,” she says. It’s the first word Rodney has heard from her since he found her down in that cell.
<<<>>>
Rodney doesn’t know a lot about healing. He doesn’t know a lot about rape, or torture, or castration. He can’t understand Teyla’s welcoming smiles or her whisper-soft kisses anymore than he can understand John’s new deadly calm or his easy banter.
What he does understand, is John gasping beneath him, still writing from the only kind of sexual pleasure he can still feel. He can understand Teyla’s small fingers tracing the lines of scars splatter across John’s belly, his thighs, laying her head down against his chest to listen to his heartbeat.
There are easy deflections and handfuls of platitudes like ashes waiting on his tongue. There are Teyla’s new sessions with Heightmeyer and John’s collected orders at briefings and soon, during missions. But it is all superfluous, the shimmery surface of reality, stretched over the turbulent motion beneath.
Elizabeth thanks him for his role in John and Teyla’s recovery, but she doesn’t understand. Like purest of scientists, all he did was bear witness.
FIN
***Inspired by:
The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle
My other fic Suddenly, Brilliantly, All at One Time, because while many in this fandom want to turn John into a girl, I just sort of want to emasculate him.
'The Other Side of Silence' because it's silent Rodney five-bazillion times better than I've done it here.
Pretty much any fic by kodiak-bear and merlin7 who actually seem to know how to write h/c the right way.
The fic I was going to write was supposed to be straight up hurt/comfort, with Rodney ending up with Teyla and John being angry and having conflicts with everyone, but then I got through a page and a half without giving Rodney any dialouge and decided hey . . . I'll write a fic where Rodney doesn't talk.
I'd really love it if one of the more hurt/comfort able people remixed this with all the requisite angst and drama and cuddling, but um . . . here it is.
Like Heisenberg, Looking In, Uncertain
How do you describe coming across the two people who mean the most to you in the world bloody and battered in a some dank, dark prison cell? Rodney doesn’t know, but he imagines it would include words like horrible, disgusting, burning, retching, tragic, impossible, concern, anger, daze.
But the only word he can think of is blood.
It’s all John’s; that much he can see. It runs down his legs in rivulets, pools itself in his seat, thick and still like a fresh coat of paint. It oozes from the bindings, clenched tight over his wrists, thick barbs digging deep into his flesh until Rodney can see through to the white glint of bone beneath. It wells up from gashes, from great craters where flesh used to be. It coats his hair, making it stick up at odd angles, nestles itself beneath his toes, seeps into the whites of his eyes, covers almost every inch of him and it’s all Rodney can do to not throw up then and there.
The only blood on Teyla is smears, fingerprints that would seal a court case on Earth (meaning lost somewhere in the pile of bodies Ronon has left in his wake). Her skin is bruised, but not broken, blood painted onto her hips and her cheeks and her perfect round breasts like fractals, like tattoos in some primitive ritual. Totem. She does not move to cover herself as they enter, flayed naked, eyes blank. She shivers and shakes, but does not look down at the assailant still fresh and smoking on the floor, cock still hanging out like a sausage, like a raw piece of meat, disgusting, rotting, unwanted.
Beside him, Ronon makes a sound, like a growl but soft somehow, plaintive. Rodney has heard it before, on Earth, dogs howling for a dead packmate, long and sad and feral. Rodney never cared much for dogs. He keeps his silence.
It is his commander that Ronon makes for first, not even stopping to check John’s pulse before he rips the blood cuffs off and hoists him over his shoulder, running up the stairs and for the jumper, where Beckett is waiting anxiously. John’s eyes were open beneath all the bruising and the swelling, but they didn’t see. God, they didn’t see.
Lorne steps forward now, and only now does Teyla flinch, looking past Lorne and into his shadow. It is the fear in her eyes that presses Rodney into action, shoving past Lorne to kneel at her side. “Teyla? Teyla . . . Teyla . . .” All he can say is her name, all other words are lost. But words are not what she needs, for she grabs for him, like the dying clutching on to the last raft of hope.
Her face is buried in his shoulder as he lifts her up. Even through the thick stench of blood, he can smell her. She always smells like Christmas, rich and woody and floral too, infused with cinnamon and nutmeg, and home.
<<<>>>
Teyla will not speak, but she doesn’t need to. There is only one relevant question. The rest can wait. Did they give anything away?
She shakes her head, and pulls Rodney in tighter. He has never thought of Teyla as feminine until now, no matter home many skirts she has worn, or how many times she has laughed that warm lilting giggle. Female, yes, because, hello, he has eyes, but feminine has always implied some sort of weakness to him, and before, the only weakness she had ever shown was a masculine one - pride.
Rodney holds her hand as the nurses clean her, helping her out of Rodney’s jacket and into a scrub top as they spread a light blue sheet over her legs, hiding Dr. Biro’s concerned face from her as she takes swabs, examines, presses. It is the same setup when people have babies, absent the screaming and the demands for painkillers. Teyla’s grip is soft in his hand, but still insistent. More than anything, the silence is consuming.
<<<>>>
Biro has offered the comfort of Teyla’s own quarters. Her physical injuries are minor. Heightmeyer wants her supervised, but it could be somewhere familiar.
Teyla just shakes here head, wide liquid eyes fixed on the door to the operating theater. Sheppard has been in there for five hours already, and Biro expects he will be there for several more.
Rodney would be making demands, harassing, annoying, pacing, determined to wheedle every fresh bit of news from the medical staff, if Teyla did make her way off her bed to slide down the wall beside him, resting her head on his shoulder before falling into still, exhausted sleep.
Rodney’s left buttock has gone numb and his shoulder and neck twinge with the uncomfortable position, but he sits with her until Nurse Perry comes out of the bio lab and sighs at them, helping Rodney lift a still-slumbering Teyla back into bed.
Rodney doesn’t know where Ronon has gone, but he’s too tired to mention it, appropriating another cot and curling up on it. He dreams of John’s hands, skimming across his own unblemished flesh, painting him and marking him with his own blood and a wicked smile.
<<<>>>
It isn’t until the debriefing the following morning that Rodney realizes that he hasn’t uttered a word in nearly twenty hours.
Lorne is the first to speak. He delivers his report more clipped and formal than Rodney has ever heard him, directly addressing the wall behind Elizabeth’s head.
“The operation went exactly as planned, Ma’am. We flew the puddlejumper through to the specified drop point outside the city walls, made it through the village with little resistance, penetrated the inner gates with two charges of C4. Ronon pointed a gun at the first servant we came across and he lead us right to them. Fifteen kills, Ma’am - all palace guard, plus the two interrogators.”
Elizabeth nods, looking uncomfortable with the stark formality of Lorne’s military best, even as Rodney is wishing it were more. He’s never wanted to destroy something before. Take apart, yes, but never obliterate.
Lorne continues, “Ronon grabbed Sheppard and returned to the puddlejumper. Teyla was . . . her injuries left her ambulatory, but in the essence of time, Dr. McKay carried her back to the jumper. They didn’t try to stop us.”
Elizabeth sighs. “Do we know what they wanted? Or why?”
“No,” Ronon says simply. “But I can go back there and find out.” There is something fierce in Ronon’s eyes, something that Rodney has never seen before, which is odd, because after two years serving together, you’d think Rodney would recognize all of Ronon’s various ferocious looks.
“No,” Elizabeth looks down at her hands. “I think it’s best we wait until Sheppard and Teyla are better able to answer that themselves. Do you have anything else to add?”
“For what they did to Sheppard, I should have killed them.”
Neither Rodney nor Lorne dares say ‘you did.’
They don’t talk about Teyla. No one wants to say it.
Elizabeth turns to Rodney. “Anything else?”
He shakes his head, unwilling to speak. For once, he agrees with Ronon’s ‘me no like, it go boom’ approach, but he’s not about to acknowledge it.
Carson is next up. He looks as exhausted as Rodney feels, dark circles under his eyes, shoulders hunched and gaze dulled by sadness. “Teyla’s . . . injuries were largely superficial. She has shown signs of shock and severe psychological trauma, but we’re mostly looking at bruising and a wee bit of tearing.” He doesn’t mention where. “Physically, my main concern is contamination, both from her assailants and from the copious amounts of the Colonel’s blood present. It is possible that it was used to . . . “ he gulps. “. . . Ease the process.”
Ronon stands up and walks out. Nobody stops him. Rodney himself, is trying too hard not to throw up to notice.
“And Colonel Sheppard?” Elizabeth asks. She hasn’t referred to him as John, not even once.
Carson’s eyes fall. He looks pale, ghost white, and his words are painted with regret, a burden greater even than protection falling heavily on his hunched shoulders. “The Colonel’s injuries were severe. As far as I can tell he was beaten, cut, and flogged with some sort of barbed instrument. Broken cheekbone, skull fracture, five cracked ribs, two broken. Right wrist and three of he fingers of his right hand, various cuts, contusions, internal bleeding. And . . . um . . . other damages.”
He doesn’t need to say it. Rodney and Lorne saw the mangled mess that was John’s genitals. Elizabeth doesn’t need to hear it in all its gross detail. They can protect her from that much at least.
<<<>>>
Rodney doesn’t want to talk to Heightmeyer about this. He doesn’t know where to start. Yes, he’s traumatized, but what right does he have to be when it’s John and Teyla who are suffering? He wasn’t raped or tortured or . . . he’s perfectly intact.
His biggest problem is how he’s supposed to deal with them, go on loving them when he can no longer relate. He can’t understand their experiences. He can’t know them. And even if he did, even if he found some sort of ridiculous parallel, went out and got raped or beaten up himself, he still wouldn’t understand, because he’s not a jaunty football-worshiping flyboy raised in a the loving lap of American military machismo or a busty alien warrior princess, leader since before the age Rodney even left the house. He can’t understand, and if he can’t, what good can he do, damnit?
“Rodney,” Heightmeyer says, handing him the paper bag she keeps on hand for their sessions. “Please calm down. Remember to breathe.”
“All you have to do,” she says, “is be there for them when they need you.”
Easy for her to say.
<<<>>>
When Rodney sneaks into the infirmary three days later, after leaving Teyla on the mainland with her people, John is sitting propped up against a mountain of pillows. One hand is casted, while the other idly stirs a bowl of soup. He’s a rainbow tapestry of bruises. Even his eyes are mottled, almost grey in the dull lighting of the infirmary.
“Hey,” he croaks, but does not smile.
Rodney pulls the curtains around them, ensconced in white. He doesn’t know what to say, so he presses his lips carefully to John’s. What he means is ‘I don’t care what Carson had to do. I still love you.’
John pushes him away. “I’m tired.”
<<<>>>
Rodney goes to visit John every day, tracking the map bruises as they fade. John spends a lot of time sleeping, and even more of it pleasantly blissed out on the best drugs Carson has to offer.
A week in they send him back into surgery for some sort of permanent shunt. When he comes out of it, his eyes are hard and when Rodney visits, he turns away.
<<<>>>
When he visits the mainland, Teyla is sitting in the middle of a field, allergens blooming around her, even tucked into intricately braided hair. Her smile is so warm when she sees him. A long time ago, he would have been dazzled by that smile or perhaps taken it for granted. But now, he feels it spiced with sadness.
She has not seen Kate Heightmeyer, and she will not see her. Rodney is glad for this. Teyla’s fierce independence is a variable he has come to count on.
‘Come,’ her eyes say as she takes his hand. They hike for what seems like hours through fields and over daisy-covered hills, up to a sparkling blue lakes nestled between two boulders.
Rodney has so many questions: how are you? What happened? Why? Will you be okay? But he doesn’t ask them. He just lets them fade into the cold blue of this vista, Teyla sitting cross-legged beside him, humming some alien tune. It echoes between the rocks like birdsong, couples calling out between themselves to mark the dawn.
<<<>>>
The second he hears the loud crash coming from the infirmary, Rodney knows that John is being a difficult patient. Of course he is. John hates pity and he hates being cooped up anywhere.
“Now, now, laddie, I know this is frustrating for you, but you have to be patient. You’re still weak, and you can’t risk infection. Please.”
“Carson, I need to get out of here,” John sighs, defeated. He is sitting at the doctor’s feet in a pile of hospital gown and bandaged limbs. “I can come back for wound checks. I’ll even do it in a wheelchair. Just let me go.”
His eyes meet Rodney’s. “Rodney can take care of me. Can’t you?”
Rodney’s too shocked by the bandages, by the mass of gauze he can spot beneath John’s hospital gown, to give a coherent answer, so he simply nods. He just wants to give John what he needs.
Carson gives an exasperated sigh. “Good luck to you, Rodney. I’ll get you his meds.”
“Thanks,” John whispers, pushing Rodney away when he tries to help him up.
<<<>>>
‘Back to the Future’ is playing on the laptop in front of them. Rodney can’t even bring himself to insult the pitiful excuse for science that is the 1980s, seeing how into it John is.
He just doesn’t know how to deal with John recently. What do you say to a guy who’s just lost his bits ‘n pieces? Especially when you used to be a . . . connoisseur of said bits ‘n pieces. He loves John, even though he’s not sure John ever loved him. The used to be fuck buddies. Now, he supposes they’re just buddies, especially with John accepting, but never contributing to Rodney’s hesitant kisses.
But John is still warm against him. Still solid, never delicate. So goddamned strong for dealing with this the way he is. Accepting it and somehow moving on.
“How’s Teyla?” John asks, when the credits roll. Other than this, he doesn’t ask anything of Rodney.
<<<>>>
It’s two months before Rodney realizes that Ronon hasn’t been to visit Teyla. He and John can often be found eating together in the commissary or taking hobbling walks around the inner perimeter of the control tower.
If Ronon is disturbed by his commanding officer’s lack of masculinity, he doesn’t let it show. In fact, Rodney would venture that the two are closer now than ever.
Rodney is in the middle of sorting out the puzzle of Ronon and Teyla when he overhears Elizabeth and John talking about it.
“Well, I could order him to go,” John says, quietly. His voice says ‘it’s not my problem.’ Which is odd, because, since when has John Sheppard not be fiercely territorial over all that he surveys?
“No, Colonel, you and I both know that ordering him won’t solve the problem.”
John’s voice seems to shrug. “He said that it is because she’s unclean.”
“And you don’t have a problem with this?” Here comes Elizabeth’s righteously moral rant, in feminist flavor.
“It’s Ronon. I can’t make him think anything he doesn’t want to think. He’ll come around. Just . . . I mean, I can’t even see her until Beckett’ll let me fly out to the mainland. When she comes back, I’m sure everything will be fine.
<<<>>>
Teyla, however, shows no intention of returning. When Rodney goes to visit her, she is planting grain or teaching he children some form of stick fighting or singing. She has the most beautiful untrained voice he has ever heard - light and clear and beautiful like the lake or the plains or the planet from space, pure and natural and so full of life.
Elizabeth worries that Teyla is damaged, that talking to Heightmeyer will somehow fix her, but Rodney knows that she is not broken.
<<<>>>
“Elizabeth asked me if I want to go back to Earth,” John says one day. He is sitting in the darkness of their now-shared quarters. It’s strangely liberating. Now that everyone knows that John no longer has the equipment that the military always seemed so concerned about, they’re perfectly willing to accept him living with another man, as if the danger was the sex and not this . . . whatever it is they have together. “There are surgeries, cosmetic or implants or something.”
“You . . .” Rodney begins, but John holds up his hand to stop him.
“I’m not going. I’m never going to get feeling back, or be able to have children. I’m needed here. It’s the only place where someone like me could be needed.”
That’s not exactly fair, but Rodney elects not to mention it.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to be with me . . . I don’t want your pity, Rodney. You can be with other people, do whatever you want. You don’t have to stay with me. Just, you know . . .”
Rodney silences him with a kiss.
<<<>>>
John refuses the hormone therapy just as he did the reconstructive surgery. His voice gets higher, from rough rumbling tenor to a melodic but empty alto. He loses weight in some places and gains it in others. His legs look less spindly nowadays, and his shoulders and arms no longer hide the narrow line of his body. Only the slight potbelly stops him from looking like a scarecrow.
His face is still fucking beautiful, moreso as some of the facial hair growth slows, letting him go more than a couple of hours without stubble. With the hair has gone some of the restless energy, the competitive drive. He’s not as strong, but he can sometimes drop Ronon now, hanging back, waiting calmly for his opportunity before using his intelligence to defeat the beast.
His relationship with Rodney has changed as well. They still tease each other mercilessly, deconstruct bad scifi movies and explore Ancient technology and laugh and joke and pretty much continue on boyishly as they always have.
But the undercurrent of insecurity has gone. Their jabs are no longer testing, jealous, possessive. John has found a sort of calm self-possession, a cool easiness that even his feet-on-the-dashboard command style never achieved.
Scarily, Rodney thinks that this might actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to John.
<<<>>>
On his next visit, the mainland is in full bloom of summer, and Teyla is giddy with it, jogging up the rough limestone of the path to their hidden mountain lake, with Rodney panting behind. She strips off her clothes without hesitation and dives right in. Rodney stands skeptically on the shore before she clambers out and wraps her naked body around him, moisture seeping through the smooth synthetic of his field gear.
Her lips are wide and wet in a smile and in a kiss.
A part of him hopes this means she has healed. Another part wonders if this is just another symptom, turning to the ‘white knight’ that rescued her.
“Teyla . . .” he pulls back, only succeeding in misbalancing himself enough for her to yank him into the cool waters of the lake.
She got water up his nose. Rape victim or no, that means she’s going to get dunked.
<<<>>>
As John’s limp dissipates and his physical therapy draws to a close, Rodney starts hearing more and more rumors, whispers, really.
Some servicemen have a problem with a dickless commander - as though they never saw that one coming. Others are worried that he will be pulled from command because it’s clearly a condition for a medical discharge.
But that all changes the day the Genii get a foothold in the city using some sort of Ancient invisibility shielding and their own version of the ATA gene therapy (protein injections that wear off after a week or so). John, using some new freakish ability to link himself to the internal sensors that he hasn’t even told Rodney about (which would mean sleeping on the couch if he didn’t just save their asses so spectacularly), kills 82 of them almost single-handedly.
After that, people don’t doubt his manliness, only perhaps his sanity.
<<<>>>
The next time Rodney goes to visit Teyla, they have sex. Teyla is soft and warm and curvy and so incredibly perfect that he’s practically crying afterwards. She kneels above him, riding him with a gentle rocking motion that’s both tantalizingly torturous and completely right.
There are a lot of questions that he should be asking, like should they be doing this? Why are they doing this? Is she ready for this? What about the rape? What about John? What about the team?
But silence has done them wonderfully thus far. Why stop when Teyla’s low keen writes masterpieces that men have searched for ages over?
<<<>>>
Teyla returns to Atlantis not long after. And the second she sets foot in the jumperbay, Ronon is rushing to her, embracing her and lifting her up of the ground.
“You’re back,” he proclaims.
And then Rodney realizes that of course someone like Ronon, tossed back into civilization after seven years, wouldn’t see ‘unclean’ as a permanent condition.
John just looks on them lazily, touching his forehead to Teyla’s when she approaches him.
“John,” she says. It’s the first word Rodney has heard from her since he found her down in that cell.
<<<>>>
Rodney doesn’t know a lot about healing. He doesn’t know a lot about rape, or torture, or castration. He can’t understand Teyla’s welcoming smiles or her whisper-soft kisses anymore than he can understand John’s new deadly calm or his easy banter.
What he does understand, is John gasping beneath him, still writing from the only kind of sexual pleasure he can still feel. He can understand Teyla’s small fingers tracing the lines of scars splatter across John’s belly, his thighs, laying her head down against his chest to listen to his heartbeat.
There are easy deflections and handfuls of platitudes like ashes waiting on his tongue. There are Teyla’s new sessions with Heightmeyer and John’s collected orders at briefings and soon, during missions. But it is all superfluous, the shimmery surface of reality, stretched over the turbulent motion beneath.
Elizabeth thanks him for his role in John and Teyla’s recovery, but she doesn’t understand. Like purest of scientists, all he did was bear witness.
FIN
***Inspired by:
The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle
My other fic Suddenly, Brilliantly, All at One Time, because while many in this fandom want to turn John into a girl, I just sort of want to emasculate him.
'The Other Side of Silence' because it's silent Rodney five-bazillion times better than I've done it here.
Pretty much any fic by kodiak-bear and merlin7 who actually seem to know how to write h/c the right way.