SGA FanFic: This Never Happened to Captain Kirk (Chapter 33)
Title This Never Happened to Captain Kirk
Chapter: 33 of 33 (Now complete)
Chapter word count: 5010
Pairings: Sheppard/Teyla
Genre: Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: R (some chapters are NC-17)
Disclaimer: The SGA world and its characters are not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit
Spoiler Alert: The story is set post-season five in a slightly AU version of the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by J. Graham, A. Griswold and M. Scott. This chapter mentions a few events from The Lost, The Furies and Secrets, books 2, 4 and 5 from this excellent series.
Summary: Early in a relationship with Teyla, John becomes the prisoner of a powerful person who has an unhealthy obsession for him. He must escape before his captor's unwanted attention maims him, kills him or breaks him. But escape may be the easy part.
Acknowledgements: A huge thanks to
amycat8733 for being my wonderful Beta reader. All mistakes are mine. I also want to acknowledge the original inspiration for this story: a scene from stella-pegasi’s very enjoyable “Always Hope” FF story. I took an incident that almost happened in her story to a much more extreme point and then I had to figure out its repercussions.
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Chapter 33
Bundled under several blankets, Rodney lay stock-still on Teyla’s couch, desperately trying to fall asleep. He fought a futile battle against all the confusing thoughts jumbling in his mind. His amazingly powerful brain was stuck on an endless loop, replaying his most recent conversation with Jennifer over and over.
In retrospect, he might have been a tad rash asking her to marry him after he had been gone from Atlantis for over two months. Not to mention that he had been a Wraith and that he had even fed on her. Although, Jennifer had been the one who not only volunteered to do it, but insisted that it had to be done to save his life, when the two of them and Ronon had been stranded on a far-flung planet, having to walk fifty kilometers to reach the closest stargate and return to Atlantis. Certain that the retrovirus gene therapy she and Beckett had concocted would protect her from the life-draining consequences of the feeding, Jennifer had talked him into it. If she didn’t do it for love, why else would she have done it? It made no other sense. In fact, as he replayed the scene in his head, Rodney distinctively remembered Jennifer telling him that she loved him. No wonder he had poured his heart out and proposed before he had a chance to rethink his timing. Clearly, his sense of romance totally sucked. That’s how he had ended up here, crashing in Teyla’s living room, and discovering that two of his teammates were shacking up. Good for them. He hoped that it would last much longer than his stint with Jennifer.
It felt as if he had barely fallen asleep when the sounds of little kid babble woke him. Thankfully there was no screeching or crying, just happy sounding, albeit annoying, chatter. Rodney pulled the blanket over his head and tried to tune it out, figuring that Teyla or Sheppard would deal with Torren. The previous night, when he got permission from Teyla to crash on her couch, he had eyed the baby monitor perched on the window sill near the kid-sized bed.
Soon enough he heard the light swoosh from a door sliding open. He opened his bleary eyes and saw Sheppard hunched over Torren’s bed. Bedhead or not, that dark hair consistently stuck out at the same odd angles. Running shoes on, sweatpants barely covering the waistband of his black underwear and no shirt suggested that Torren’s cries had caught him in the midst of getting dressed. It was good to see that things had not changed too drastically during Rodney’s absence from Atlantis. Despite the newly acquired domesticity, Sheppard clung to his routine of running at an ungodly morning hour.
“Dada?”
“Come on buddy, let’s get you to the potty. Then you can join mama on the big bed, while I go for a run,” Sheppard whispered as he reached over the low railing to scoop up the little boy and the stuffed animal he clutched. A classic Winnie the Pooh-excellent choice, Rodney thought.
“You run with Ronon? Me too,” In contradiction to his enthusiastic proclamation, Torren rubbed his eyes while leaning his head on Sheppard’s shoulder.
“You’re too sleepy now. We’ll run together later,” said Sheppard. When his eyes met Rodney’s, his voice rose to a normal volume. “Hey Rodney, sorry about the early morning wake-up call. I warned you about it.”
“I know, I know. No problem,” Rodney said.
As he watched Sheppard slip back into the bedroom, Rodney caught sight of a large area of ultra-pale skin on his friend’s back. It’s not as if he had made it a point to check out Sheppard’s body in the years that they had known each other, but he had a more than passing familiarity with it given the numerous times they had shared a locker room and even less private facilities on off-world missions. Despite the dim light from the dawning sun filtering through the window shades, a large swatch of skin was clearly several shades lighter than Sheppard’s natural skin color. What the hell had happened to him? Before he could voice the question, the bedroom door closed, leaving him alone in the living room.
Rodney flipped the pillow over and plopped his head back down on it. For a fleeting moment he contemplated not bothering going back to sleep and getting up to do some work, but then he remembered that he had not yet been given clearance to return to duty. His inability to irrefutably demonstrate to everyone that he was not some sort of Wraith sleeper agent was driving him crazy. There was no point getting up-he had nothing productive to do. Nothing. To try to clear his head, he began to mentally recite the prime numbers starting with 3001, 3011, 3019, 3023, 3037, … Elementary, imbecile-level stuff, precisely what might lull his genius brain to sleep.
He got to 9817 and then he was in the midst of a convoluted dream. There was Dust, the Wraith he had been brainwashed to accept as his brother (but who had really been his handler), caught in a hail of P90 fire. His chest spurted blood from over half a dozen wounds as he fell to the floor. Filled with fear and anger, Rodney grabbed Dust’s stunner and fired it repeatedly at a tall lanky man wearing the black Atlantis BDUs. Even as the man lay unmoving on the floor, blood seeping out of his nose and ears, he kept on firing and firing until his pool of blood merged with Dust’s. It was only then that Rodney recognized Sheppard.
Rodney jolted awake, his heart pounding.
“Rodney, are you okay?” Sheppard said from the kitchenette area. He held a glass of something, hopefully not orange juice.
“What? What happened?” he said, slurring the words.
“You were mumbling and seemed …uh … agitated.”
“Oh great, another crappy nightmare,” Rodney scrubbed his face trying to shake off the lingering sense of panic and dread.
Sheppard sat down on the arm chair next to the couch. “It’s okay Rodney, give it time. You’ve been through a lot. Believe me, I know about the pleasures of being transmutated into another creature and then waiting to get back to normal. It’s no picnic.”
Rodney managed to squelch the impulse to snap at Sheppard that he had no idea what he had gone through. Of course he did. Despite the years that had passed, Rodney had not forgotten the sight of a bugged-out Sheppard writhing in the infirmary isolation room through the torturous reversal of the iratus-bug conversion.
Fresh out of the shower, Sheppard had a towel wrapped around his neck. At least he was fully clothed. His hair defied the laws of physics as usual-remaining unresponsive to the pull of gravity even with the extra weight of the water clinging to it. When he scrubbed his head with the towel, Rodney noticed new scars on his wrists and arms.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked.
Sheppard looked at him with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”
“Your wrists and your back. How did you get hurt?” Rodney sat up as he remembered a horrible thought. “Oh god! Did it happen during the Wraith incursion, when they-we … stole the ZPM?”
“No, no I didn’t get hurt then.” Instead of elaborating, Sheppard took out a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his hair.
Initially stunned at the unfamiliar sight of Sheppard using a comb, Rodney got another good look at his wrists. “You didn’t try to kill yourself, did you? If you did, you were doing it all wrong.
“Geez Rodney, of course I didn’t try to kill myself,” Sheppard said, his voice torn between amusement and annoyance. “I got hurt in a stupid, off-world diplomatic mission gone wrong. No big deal.”
“Whatever caused the need for a huge skin graft on your back sounds like a very big deal to me.”
Sheppard sighed, “Well, okay, it wasn’t that pleasant but it’s over now and we have other things to worry about.”
“But …”
“Look, Rodney, what happened is the usual crap that happens. Don’t worry about it,” Sheppard said as he draped the towel over the back of a chair and walked to the door. “I’ve to go to work. Torren and Teyla already left so you’ve the suite to yourself for a while. Enjoy it.”
Sheppard’s oblique answer and hasty retreat did nothing to stifle Rodney’s curiosity and incipient nagging feeling of guilt. This one was in addition to the burden of guilt he already carried for his actions as a brainwashed Wraith scientist, a cleverman according to their nomenclature, who had helped Queen Death’s troops overcome Atlantis’ security protocols, infiltrate the base and steal the ZPM, killing many and injuring dozens of military and civilians. Rationally, Rodney understood to a certain degree that what happened when he was a Wraith wasn’t his fault, but he had to take complete ownership of this new sense of guilt. It was totally his.
In the past month, when he had finally come to his senses and realized that he was not a Wraith, he had spent countless hours thinking of ways to communicate with Atlantis to coordinate and plan his escape, but he had thought little if anything about what might have happened to his girlfriend, friends, colleagues and even his minions in his absence from Atlantis-when he wasn’t there to watch their backs and get them out of dire messes. Granted, he had spent every other waking moment terrified that he might slipup in his pretense of an obedient Wraith, and be killed or re-brainwashed. While he might have been too thickheaded to realize it when he was talking to Jennifer, here in the presence of his friend, Rodney felt ashamed for having been too self-centered to think about how his absence had affected the people he cared about. No wonder Jennifer thought of him as poor husband material.
Rodney considered the most likely reasons why Sheppard would keep whatever happened to him secret: was it because he didn’t think that he was a good enough friend to confide in or was it just the standard Sheppard silent-type, tough-as-nails default response? The later, he hoped.
At lunch the same day, he tried to get answers from Ronon. Probably not the smartest idea since the big guy hadn’t stopped acting leery around him, even though all that was left visible of his Wraith persona was the white hair. The rest of his body had been returned to his normal, albeit slightly skinnier self, thanks to Jennifer and Carson’s medical, surgical and gene therapy wizardry. Their form of pseudo-scientific, voodoo medicine did have its uses.
Ronon said, “Sheppard was kidnapped while we were off-world. We couldn’t find him. He’d been taken through several stargates. A few days later, with Kharla’s help he managed to escape and make it back to Atlantis on his own.”
“But who took him? What did they want from him? How did he get hurt?”
After chewing and (thankfully) swallowing another enormous bite of food, Ronon said, “If you want to know more, you should talk to Sheppard.”
“But he won’t tell me,” Rodney said, exasperated.
“There’s your answer.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ronon shrugged his shoulders and picked up his tray. “See you later,” he said as he walked off.
After lunch Rodney returned to Teyla’s quarters to gather the meager possessions he had left there and move them to his new, back-to-being-single quarters. As he picked up the discarded clothes from last night, he noticed the computer sitting on the low table near the couch where he had slept. The blank screen appeared to be beaconing him. Use me, it seemed to say.
Before he had a chance to rethink his actions, he logged on and began searching through his team’s mission reports for the previous two and a half months. He focused on Sheppard and Teyla’s because Ronon’s would be too ridiculously uninformative and he was not in the mood to enjoy their understated quality. As he swiftly skimmed through several weeks’ worth of missions, there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable beyond the reassuring fact that his teammates, along with a large contingent of other Atlantis military personnel, had been working their asses off to find him.
Finally encountering something worth reading, Rodney cringed at Teyla’s description of their failed rescue effort when he had not recognized them and continued to fire at Sheppard even after he had gone down. According to the linked medical report, one or two more stunner zaps would have sent him into a fatal arrhythmia. Crap.
He went through two more weeks of mission reports before he found what he had been looking for: Teyla’s description of a market fire that had been a cover for Sheppard’s kidnapping. That report was followed by others of failed attempts to find any clues to his whereabouts. Rodney skipped a whole bunch of reports until he flagged one from Sheppard. Unfortunately, this one contained the briefest of summaries, practically matching word by word what Ronon had told him at lunch. To his consternation, he was blocked from accessing the links to the additional information and accompanying medical report. He took that as a welcomed challenge.
In the next quarter hour, he tried several approaches to bypass the security measures. As he got nowhere, he grew irritated. It should not have been this difficult to access the files he needed to read. Frustrated at being completely blocked from accessing Sheppard’s medical records, he tried another tactic. Through a back way into the temporary medical files of non-Atlantis personnel, he obtained access to Kharla’s medical record, thinking that her information might shed some light on what Sheppard had gone through.
Rodney had seen Kharla in the infirmary a few times, while he had been confined during his transition back to human. Young, pretty, obviously bright and overly enthusiastic about the wonders of Ancient and Earth medicine-Rodney had found himself slightly amused, partly horrified, and a tad jealous of the way she drunk up every bit of knowledge the docs shared with her. A Junior Carson in the making. It might be nice to have a smart protégé like that of his own. All he got were either morons or overzealous idiots who tended to do things that would get themselves or others killed.
As he scrolled through the information on the screen, a couple of entries grabbed his attention. A little over a week after her initial medical exam and treatment for minor, but nasty sounding bruises and cuts (Rodney cringed when he read about the one on her throat), Kharla received two oral medications two days apart, first mifepristone and then misoprostol. The drug names rang a tiny alarm bell. Rodney mulled the information over for another minute before he remembered what they were used for. Talk about too much information -this was certainly something he did not need to know about Kharla’s personal life. The little voice in his head that had been begging him to stop started sounding much more reasonable. He closed her record, making sure to erase all traces that he had accessed it, and went back to try a different approach for viewing Sheppard’s.
Concentrating on the computer codes, he did not hear the door open. By the time he felt a presence next to him, it was too late. A familiar hand snapped the laptop shut.
“Rodney, I can’t believe that you tried to hack into my private health files!” Sheppard said, in a weary, exasperated tone. “What is there about the words private, privacy, confidential, that you don’t understand?”
“But I didn’t get in,” he said before having a chance to reconsider his mistake. One small mercy was that he had stopped himself before uttering the word ‘yet’.
“That’s only because we had Jeannie and Zelenka upgrade all the security protocols while you were, um, gone. By the way, I’m pretty sure that Jeannie programmed the ones that blocked you and alerted me,” The last part, Sheppard said in a mocking tone.
With incredible self-control, Rodney held himself back from arguing that soon enough he would have found a way in. He knew that he had done two things wrong: the hacking and the being careless enough to get caught doing it.
“Look, I know that you went missing for almost five days and I saw the signs of serious injuries to your back, arms and wrists. That and the fact that you won’t tell me what happened raises a huge red flag. I’m worried about you.”
“A peaceful mission gone wrong, like I told you already. It’s the usual stuff, Rodney. I pissed somebody off. They got mad and captured me. It was a little rough but I got the best of them and escaped. Jennifer and Carson fixed me up. End of story.”
“But there is more to it isn’t there? They were more than ‘a little rough’ on you,’” Rodney punctuated that remark with air quotes and an extra dose of sarcasm. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed a huge skin graft on your back, not to mention the scars on your wrists and arm.”
“Okay, I admit that I was in pretty bad shape when I got back to Atlantis.”
“And what is your connection with that Kharla person? Carson gets misty eyed when he sings her praises about some botanical medical voodoo.”
“Kharla was practically a prisoner too. She helped me escape,” said Sheppard. “All her people are gone and she wants to learn everything that Beckett, Keller and the other medical docs are willing to teach her. She’s working her butt off in the infirmary. Don’t mess with her.”
“I am not going to mess with her. I was just curious,” Rodney didn’t need to know anything more about Kharla, so he got back on track to his main objective. “Look, you told Ronon and Teyla about what happened to you, right?” Rodney said.
“Teyla, of course. Ronon sort of ... well, yeah. But, no offense, they were here when it happened.” said Sheppard.
“No offense taken, but would you have told me if I had been here?”
“Ah … uhm,” Sheppard paused. “That’s not the point.”
“Yes it is,” Rodney said, peculiarly hurt by Sheppard’s persistently noncommittal responses. “You wouldn’t? But, why not? I’m part of the team, the same as they are. Like the Three Musketeers, which as you well know, should have been called the Four Musketeers, but what would you expect from a French author?” He snapped his fingers, “Or, better yet, the Fantastic Four-we tell each other important stuff. Don’t you trust me?”
“Rodney, it’s not that,” Sheppard chewed his lip, grasping for the proper words. “It’s-it’s complicated.”
Sheppard purposefully withholding of information on something that had clearly thoroughly shaken him felt like a betrayal, almost as bad as Jennifer saying no to his marriage proposal. Rodney thought-no, he was completely, absolutely certain that he and Sheppard were actual, honest to goodness best friends. For Pete’s sake, this was the guy he had turned to when he had been losing his memories and intellect, regressing to childhood, practically blabbering like a complete idiot. Even when he had forgotten who he was, he had known instinctively that he could trust Sheppard. Obviously, Sheppard did not reciprocate this certainty.
“Complicated? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You either trust me enough to tell me whatever it is that you are hiding or you don’t. I told you everything that I remember about what happened to me at the hands of the Wraith. Everything.” Rodney was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “No matter how potentially humiliating.”
Because he was forcing himself to be unusually observant, Rodney noticed Sheppard’s suddenly flushed complexion as he chewed his lower lip.
Sheppard’s anger at him seemed to dissipate. “Look, Rodney, with what the Wraith did to you, it’s amazing how you managed to stay true to yourself. You should be proud for being the worst Wraith ever, not feeding and shooting like a panicky human. And, most of all, for realizing that you weren’t one of them.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Thanks, I guess. But I should have figured it out much sooner before-before all the damage that I caused as a Wraith. The people that got killed …”
“It wasn't your fault.”
“It definitely feels like it was,” said Rodney.
“Yeah, I can relate to that,” Sheppard said. After a long staring contest that made Rodney feel as if he was under a microscope, he added, “Fine, I’ll tell you. But not now. I have another meeting with Woolsey. Meet me at twenty-two hundred hours in the West observation room. Do you remember how to get there?”
“Yes, of course,” Rodney said.
“In the meantime, take it easy, Rodney, and stay away from secured files. They are secured for good reasons.”
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When Rodney arrived at the appointed time, Sheppard was already in the room, standing by the glass wall that looked out over the dark ocean. Because the room faced away from the lights of the Atlantis towers, they had a magnificent view of a star-filled night.
Sheppard turned around and said, “I am going to tell you what happened, but first you have to agree to abide by my conditions, without whining or otherwise trying to negotiate for a better deal.”
“But, but why?” Rodney asked, perplexed by the strange request.
“No arguments,” said Sheppard, his gaze locked on him.
Rodney sighed, “This is crazy, but go ahead and name your conditions.”
Sheppard walked over to the wall by the doorway. A small wall panel slid open, letting out chilly air. As he pulled out a six-pack of beer, Rodney wondered how many other rooms had these hidden Ancient refrigerators and why Sheppard hadn't told him about them. He bit back the urge to complain.
In the low light he couldn't read the label but the tall, dark amber bottles looked like good stuff. Not that it mattered; he hadn't had any beer or other kind of Earth liquor in so long that anything would be considered good stuff right now.
“First condition is that we are going to drink a couple of these before I start.”
“Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable,” Rodney said.
“Second, you have to promise me that you will never again hack or even attempt to hack my medical and psych files.” Sheppard had that intense look that was usually reserved for recalcitrant troops that had royally messed up. It kind of reminded Rodney of the frosty times after Doranda. “Promise me that, Rodney.”
“Fine, I promise not to hack into any of your records ever again. Look, I’m truly sorry about that, it’s just …” Rodney was saved from trying to come up with a reasonable excuse by Sheppard handing him an opened beer bottle. “Thanks.”
Sheppard took a long slug from his bottle before speaking again. “Third, and this is also a deal breaker, Rodney, you have to promise me or, better yet, swear on the Holy Grail of the ZPMs or whatever deity or other thing works for you, that from now on you will absolutely, positively stop making Captain Kirk jokes at my expense.”
Rodney almost spit out a mouthful. It would have been a great waste. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. I mean it, Rodney. From now to eternity, you will no longer make me the butt of your Kirk jokes. Swear or the deal is off.”
Rodney had rarely seen his friend look so earnest. Sheppard had put his bottle down on the window sill and folded his arms across his chest. A pose that in most people would be considered defensive but on him it emanated a menacing if-you-defy-me-I-will-kick-your-ass or, worse yet, never-confide-in-you-again message.
What the heck had he talked himself into? Maybe he didn't want to know what had hurt Sheppard so deeply. But to retreat now, after all his pushing and prodding, would be cowardly. Rodney placed his bottle next to Sheppard’s and held up his right arm. “Alright, alright. I do solemnly swear on my parents’ graves that I will never again utter a Kirk joke at your expense. Is that good enough or do you want to parse it out to make sure that I didn't sneak in some ultra-clever loopholes?”
“Nah, that works for me.” Sheppard finally cracked a smile. He patted Rodney’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
Sheppard grabbed his bottle with one hand and the six-pack with the other. Then he sat down on the edge of the nearest bench. With three walls of floor to ceiling windows, this room provided the closest approximation to being outdoors in Atlantis. The longing looks Sheppard gave at the view left no doubt that if it hadn't been unbearably cold out there-even for the guy who professed to like Antarctica-he would much rather be sitting on the furthest edge of a dock, his feet dangling over the dark waters.
Sheppard patted the empty spot next to him and pointed to the six-pack. “Now, we are going to have our drinks and then I’ll tell you what you missed.”
“Excellent plan,” said Rodney taking up the invitation to sit down.
They drank their first bottles in silence-except for a few well-placed burps. They were both obviously a bit out of practice imbibing any fermented beverages.
“So, let me guess,” Sheppard said, putting his empty bottle back in the cardboard bin. “Ronon is obviously Thing and you have me pegged as Johnny Storm and yourself as Mister Fantastic. I’m good with being a flying human torch and, I guess, you could pass as a scientific genius but you’re completely delusional if you think that you’re the leader of our group. Also, how does it work with Teyla being the Invisible Woman? As Sue Storm she is definitely not marrying your Mister Fantastic.”
Of all things, this stuff, these conversations with Sheppard about comic book superheroes and other inane subjects were among the things he had missed the most during his time with the Wraith. Despite their vast scientific knowledge, even the smartest of Wraith clevermen were no fun to hang around; they utterly lacked a sense of humor.
He unscrewed two fresh bottles and handed one to Sheppard. “I didn’t say that it was a perfect analogy. It was the best I could come up under pressure.” He shrugged. “By the way, congratulations on you and Teyla. It’s great. I’m very happy for you both. I really am.”
They clinked their bottles in a toast and dutifully worked on draining them. Rodney sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have to go pee in the middle of Sheppard’s wretched story.
After a few hefty slugs, he began his story. Since, for once in his life, Rodney did not interrupt him, he was up by two bottles by the time Sheppard finished his account.
“Wow,” he said. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah,” said Sheppard, eyeing his still half-full second bottle. “That cost me almost two weeks that I should have spent finding you.”
“Well, I wish I had been here to help find you,” Rodney said.
Rodney watched his friend chug down the remains of the bottle as he stared out the window. Now, teal and burnt-orange glowing whorls lit up the blue-black sky. This nightly aurora borealis show beat anything he had ever seen on Earth, even in Siberia. Alcohol and the beauty of nature were a good way to try to ease the pain of life. If only they had time for more of both.
What Sheppard had gone through sickened him. While he had lived in relative luxury and blissful ignorance as a Wraith-treated well, except for the kidnapping and forced-surgery/molecular tinkering-his friend had been kidnapped, tortured and abused purely for the pleasure of a sadist and her equally cruel guards. Sheppard hadn’t given any specifics about what was done to him, except admitting that he had been raped multiple times-which was an incredibly courageous and unprecedented admission in Rodney’s book.
As he wiped his mouth from the last dregs of beer, Rodney’s mind connected the dots that he had not been even remotely interested in connecting. Sheppard had not been the only one sexually abused; Kharla must have been too, which would explain her need for miscarriage-inducing drugs. Poor kid. At the very least, what he had observed of her in the infirmary suggested that she was now in a good place, moving on with her life and so on. Taking a sidelong glance at his friend, Rodney wondered if Sheppard knew. Of course, he would never ask. He truly regretted reading those files.
“Maybe, thirty years from now when we are cranky old men chugging down beers over a game of chess, we’ll find these stories funny,” he said, trying to lighten up the mood.
“I doubt it,” said Sheppard.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“So what are you going to do about your hair?” Sheppard’s voice sounded suddenly cheerful.
Rodney reflexively touched his head. “My hair is fine.”
“You’re right; it makes you look like Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Very cool. Maybe we should watch it again when we have time for another movie night.”
“You just want to make fun of me in front of Ronon and Teyla,” Rodney said.
“How could you possibly think that? I just love that movie,” Sheppard thought for a minute, mischief in his eyes. “Or, if you want, I could dig up the Star Trek Next Generation episodes, when Picard gets turned into a Borg.”
“No,” Rodney nearly choked on the beer in the rush to protest that truly evil suggestion. “Back to the Future is a much better idea.”
The End
Go back to Chapters 1& 2
Chapter: 33 of 33 (Now complete)
Chapter word count: 5010
Pairings: Sheppard/Teyla
Genre: Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: R (some chapters are NC-17)
Disclaimer: The SGA world and its characters are not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit
Spoiler Alert: The story is set post-season five in a slightly AU version of the Legacy Series of SGA novels written by J. Graham, A. Griswold and M. Scott. This chapter mentions a few events from The Lost, The Furies and Secrets, books 2, 4 and 5 from this excellent series.
Summary: Early in a relationship with Teyla, John becomes the prisoner of a powerful person who has an unhealthy obsession for him. He must escape before his captor's unwanted attention maims him, kills him or breaks him. But escape may be the easy part.
Acknowledgements: A huge thanks to
amycat8733 for being my wonderful Beta reader. All mistakes are mine. I also want to acknowledge the original inspiration for this story: a scene from stella-pegasi’s very enjoyable “Always Hope” FF story. I took an incident that almost happened in her story to a much more extreme point and then I had to figure out its repercussions.
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Chapter 33
Bundled under several blankets, Rodney lay stock-still on Teyla’s couch, desperately trying to fall asleep. He fought a futile battle against all the confusing thoughts jumbling in his mind. His amazingly powerful brain was stuck on an endless loop, replaying his most recent conversation with Jennifer over and over.
In retrospect, he might have been a tad rash asking her to marry him after he had been gone from Atlantis for over two months. Not to mention that he had been a Wraith and that he had even fed on her. Although, Jennifer had been the one who not only volunteered to do it, but insisted that it had to be done to save his life, when the two of them and Ronon had been stranded on a far-flung planet, having to walk fifty kilometers to reach the closest stargate and return to Atlantis. Certain that the retrovirus gene therapy she and Beckett had concocted would protect her from the life-draining consequences of the feeding, Jennifer had talked him into it. If she didn’t do it for love, why else would she have done it? It made no other sense. In fact, as he replayed the scene in his head, Rodney distinctively remembered Jennifer telling him that she loved him. No wonder he had poured his heart out and proposed before he had a chance to rethink his timing. Clearly, his sense of romance totally sucked. That’s how he had ended up here, crashing in Teyla’s living room, and discovering that two of his teammates were shacking up. Good for them. He hoped that it would last much longer than his stint with Jennifer.
It felt as if he had barely fallen asleep when the sounds of little kid babble woke him. Thankfully there was no screeching or crying, just happy sounding, albeit annoying, chatter. Rodney pulled the blanket over his head and tried to tune it out, figuring that Teyla or Sheppard would deal with Torren. The previous night, when he got permission from Teyla to crash on her couch, he had eyed the baby monitor perched on the window sill near the kid-sized bed.
Soon enough he heard the light swoosh from a door sliding open. He opened his bleary eyes and saw Sheppard hunched over Torren’s bed. Bedhead or not, that dark hair consistently stuck out at the same odd angles. Running shoes on, sweatpants barely covering the waistband of his black underwear and no shirt suggested that Torren’s cries had caught him in the midst of getting dressed. It was good to see that things had not changed too drastically during Rodney’s absence from Atlantis. Despite the newly acquired domesticity, Sheppard clung to his routine of running at an ungodly morning hour.
“Dada?”
“Come on buddy, let’s get you to the potty. Then you can join mama on the big bed, while I go for a run,” Sheppard whispered as he reached over the low railing to scoop up the little boy and the stuffed animal he clutched. A classic Winnie the Pooh-excellent choice, Rodney thought.
“You run with Ronon? Me too,” In contradiction to his enthusiastic proclamation, Torren rubbed his eyes while leaning his head on Sheppard’s shoulder.
“You’re too sleepy now. We’ll run together later,” said Sheppard. When his eyes met Rodney’s, his voice rose to a normal volume. “Hey Rodney, sorry about the early morning wake-up call. I warned you about it.”
“I know, I know. No problem,” Rodney said.
As he watched Sheppard slip back into the bedroom, Rodney caught sight of a large area of ultra-pale skin on his friend’s back. It’s not as if he had made it a point to check out Sheppard’s body in the years that they had known each other, but he had a more than passing familiarity with it given the numerous times they had shared a locker room and even less private facilities on off-world missions. Despite the dim light from the dawning sun filtering through the window shades, a large swatch of skin was clearly several shades lighter than Sheppard’s natural skin color. What the hell had happened to him? Before he could voice the question, the bedroom door closed, leaving him alone in the living room.
Rodney flipped the pillow over and plopped his head back down on it. For a fleeting moment he contemplated not bothering going back to sleep and getting up to do some work, but then he remembered that he had not yet been given clearance to return to duty. His inability to irrefutably demonstrate to everyone that he was not some sort of Wraith sleeper agent was driving him crazy. There was no point getting up-he had nothing productive to do. Nothing. To try to clear his head, he began to mentally recite the prime numbers starting with 3001, 3011, 3019, 3023, 3037, … Elementary, imbecile-level stuff, precisely what might lull his genius brain to sleep.
He got to 9817 and then he was in the midst of a convoluted dream. There was Dust, the Wraith he had been brainwashed to accept as his brother (but who had really been his handler), caught in a hail of P90 fire. His chest spurted blood from over half a dozen wounds as he fell to the floor. Filled with fear and anger, Rodney grabbed Dust’s stunner and fired it repeatedly at a tall lanky man wearing the black Atlantis BDUs. Even as the man lay unmoving on the floor, blood seeping out of his nose and ears, he kept on firing and firing until his pool of blood merged with Dust’s. It was only then that Rodney recognized Sheppard.
Rodney jolted awake, his heart pounding.
“Rodney, are you okay?” Sheppard said from the kitchenette area. He held a glass of something, hopefully not orange juice.
“What? What happened?” he said, slurring the words.
“You were mumbling and seemed …uh … agitated.”
“Oh great, another crappy nightmare,” Rodney scrubbed his face trying to shake off the lingering sense of panic and dread.
Sheppard sat down on the arm chair next to the couch. “It’s okay Rodney, give it time. You’ve been through a lot. Believe me, I know about the pleasures of being transmutated into another creature and then waiting to get back to normal. It’s no picnic.”
Rodney managed to squelch the impulse to snap at Sheppard that he had no idea what he had gone through. Of course he did. Despite the years that had passed, Rodney had not forgotten the sight of a bugged-out Sheppard writhing in the infirmary isolation room through the torturous reversal of the iratus-bug conversion.
Fresh out of the shower, Sheppard had a towel wrapped around his neck. At least he was fully clothed. His hair defied the laws of physics as usual-remaining unresponsive to the pull of gravity even with the extra weight of the water clinging to it. When he scrubbed his head with the towel, Rodney noticed new scars on his wrists and arms.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked.
Sheppard looked at him with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”
“Your wrists and your back. How did you get hurt?” Rodney sat up as he remembered a horrible thought. “Oh god! Did it happen during the Wraith incursion, when they-we … stole the ZPM?”
“No, no I didn’t get hurt then.” Instead of elaborating, Sheppard took out a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his hair.
Initially stunned at the unfamiliar sight of Sheppard using a comb, Rodney got another good look at his wrists. “You didn’t try to kill yourself, did you? If you did, you were doing it all wrong.
“Geez Rodney, of course I didn’t try to kill myself,” Sheppard said, his voice torn between amusement and annoyance. “I got hurt in a stupid, off-world diplomatic mission gone wrong. No big deal.”
“Whatever caused the need for a huge skin graft on your back sounds like a very big deal to me.”
Sheppard sighed, “Well, okay, it wasn’t that pleasant but it’s over now and we have other things to worry about.”
“But …”
“Look, Rodney, what happened is the usual crap that happens. Don’t worry about it,” Sheppard said as he draped the towel over the back of a chair and walked to the door. “I’ve to go to work. Torren and Teyla already left so you’ve the suite to yourself for a while. Enjoy it.”
Sheppard’s oblique answer and hasty retreat did nothing to stifle Rodney’s curiosity and incipient nagging feeling of guilt. This one was in addition to the burden of guilt he already carried for his actions as a brainwashed Wraith scientist, a cleverman according to their nomenclature, who had helped Queen Death’s troops overcome Atlantis’ security protocols, infiltrate the base and steal the ZPM, killing many and injuring dozens of military and civilians. Rationally, Rodney understood to a certain degree that what happened when he was a Wraith wasn’t his fault, but he had to take complete ownership of this new sense of guilt. It was totally his.
In the past month, when he had finally come to his senses and realized that he was not a Wraith, he had spent countless hours thinking of ways to communicate with Atlantis to coordinate and plan his escape, but he had thought little if anything about what might have happened to his girlfriend, friends, colleagues and even his minions in his absence from Atlantis-when he wasn’t there to watch their backs and get them out of dire messes. Granted, he had spent every other waking moment terrified that he might slipup in his pretense of an obedient Wraith, and be killed or re-brainwashed. While he might have been too thickheaded to realize it when he was talking to Jennifer, here in the presence of his friend, Rodney felt ashamed for having been too self-centered to think about how his absence had affected the people he cared about. No wonder Jennifer thought of him as poor husband material.
Rodney considered the most likely reasons why Sheppard would keep whatever happened to him secret: was it because he didn’t think that he was a good enough friend to confide in or was it just the standard Sheppard silent-type, tough-as-nails default response? The later, he hoped.
At lunch the same day, he tried to get answers from Ronon. Probably not the smartest idea since the big guy hadn’t stopped acting leery around him, even though all that was left visible of his Wraith persona was the white hair. The rest of his body had been returned to his normal, albeit slightly skinnier self, thanks to Jennifer and Carson’s medical, surgical and gene therapy wizardry. Their form of pseudo-scientific, voodoo medicine did have its uses.
Ronon said, “Sheppard was kidnapped while we were off-world. We couldn’t find him. He’d been taken through several stargates. A few days later, with Kharla’s help he managed to escape and make it back to Atlantis on his own.”
“But who took him? What did they want from him? How did he get hurt?”
After chewing and (thankfully) swallowing another enormous bite of food, Ronon said, “If you want to know more, you should talk to Sheppard.”
“But he won’t tell me,” Rodney said, exasperated.
“There’s your answer.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ronon shrugged his shoulders and picked up his tray. “See you later,” he said as he walked off.
After lunch Rodney returned to Teyla’s quarters to gather the meager possessions he had left there and move them to his new, back-to-being-single quarters. As he picked up the discarded clothes from last night, he noticed the computer sitting on the low table near the couch where he had slept. The blank screen appeared to be beaconing him. Use me, it seemed to say.
Before he had a chance to rethink his actions, he logged on and began searching through his team’s mission reports for the previous two and a half months. He focused on Sheppard and Teyla’s because Ronon’s would be too ridiculously uninformative and he was not in the mood to enjoy their understated quality. As he swiftly skimmed through several weeks’ worth of missions, there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable beyond the reassuring fact that his teammates, along with a large contingent of other Atlantis military personnel, had been working their asses off to find him.
Finally encountering something worth reading, Rodney cringed at Teyla’s description of their failed rescue effort when he had not recognized them and continued to fire at Sheppard even after he had gone down. According to the linked medical report, one or two more stunner zaps would have sent him into a fatal arrhythmia. Crap.
He went through two more weeks of mission reports before he found what he had been looking for: Teyla’s description of a market fire that had been a cover for Sheppard’s kidnapping. That report was followed by others of failed attempts to find any clues to his whereabouts. Rodney skipped a whole bunch of reports until he flagged one from Sheppard. Unfortunately, this one contained the briefest of summaries, practically matching word by word what Ronon had told him at lunch. To his consternation, he was blocked from accessing the links to the additional information and accompanying medical report. He took that as a welcomed challenge.
In the next quarter hour, he tried several approaches to bypass the security measures. As he got nowhere, he grew irritated. It should not have been this difficult to access the files he needed to read. Frustrated at being completely blocked from accessing Sheppard’s medical records, he tried another tactic. Through a back way into the temporary medical files of non-Atlantis personnel, he obtained access to Kharla’s medical record, thinking that her information might shed some light on what Sheppard had gone through.
Rodney had seen Kharla in the infirmary a few times, while he had been confined during his transition back to human. Young, pretty, obviously bright and overly enthusiastic about the wonders of Ancient and Earth medicine-Rodney had found himself slightly amused, partly horrified, and a tad jealous of the way she drunk up every bit of knowledge the docs shared with her. A Junior Carson in the making. It might be nice to have a smart protégé like that of his own. All he got were either morons or overzealous idiots who tended to do things that would get themselves or others killed.
As he scrolled through the information on the screen, a couple of entries grabbed his attention. A little over a week after her initial medical exam and treatment for minor, but nasty sounding bruises and cuts (Rodney cringed when he read about the one on her throat), Kharla received two oral medications two days apart, first mifepristone and then misoprostol. The drug names rang a tiny alarm bell. Rodney mulled the information over for another minute before he remembered what they were used for. Talk about too much information -this was certainly something he did not need to know about Kharla’s personal life. The little voice in his head that had been begging him to stop started sounding much more reasonable. He closed her record, making sure to erase all traces that he had accessed it, and went back to try a different approach for viewing Sheppard’s.
Concentrating on the computer codes, he did not hear the door open. By the time he felt a presence next to him, it was too late. A familiar hand snapped the laptop shut.
“Rodney, I can’t believe that you tried to hack into my private health files!” Sheppard said, in a weary, exasperated tone. “What is there about the words private, privacy, confidential, that you don’t understand?”
“But I didn’t get in,” he said before having a chance to reconsider his mistake. One small mercy was that he had stopped himself before uttering the word ‘yet’.
“That’s only because we had Jeannie and Zelenka upgrade all the security protocols while you were, um, gone. By the way, I’m pretty sure that Jeannie programmed the ones that blocked you and alerted me,” The last part, Sheppard said in a mocking tone.
With incredible self-control, Rodney held himself back from arguing that soon enough he would have found a way in. He knew that he had done two things wrong: the hacking and the being careless enough to get caught doing it.
“Look, I know that you went missing for almost five days and I saw the signs of serious injuries to your back, arms and wrists. That and the fact that you won’t tell me what happened raises a huge red flag. I’m worried about you.”
“A peaceful mission gone wrong, like I told you already. It’s the usual stuff, Rodney. I pissed somebody off. They got mad and captured me. It was a little rough but I got the best of them and escaped. Jennifer and Carson fixed me up. End of story.”
“But there is more to it isn’t there? They were more than ‘a little rough’ on you,’” Rodney punctuated that remark with air quotes and an extra dose of sarcasm. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed a huge skin graft on your back, not to mention the scars on your wrists and arm.”
“Okay, I admit that I was in pretty bad shape when I got back to Atlantis.”
“And what is your connection with that Kharla person? Carson gets misty eyed when he sings her praises about some botanical medical voodoo.”
“Kharla was practically a prisoner too. She helped me escape,” said Sheppard. “All her people are gone and she wants to learn everything that Beckett, Keller and the other medical docs are willing to teach her. She’s working her butt off in the infirmary. Don’t mess with her.”
“I am not going to mess with her. I was just curious,” Rodney didn’t need to know anything more about Kharla, so he got back on track to his main objective. “Look, you told Ronon and Teyla about what happened to you, right?” Rodney said.
“Teyla, of course. Ronon sort of ... well, yeah. But, no offense, they were here when it happened.” said Sheppard.
“No offense taken, but would you have told me if I had been here?”
“Ah … uhm,” Sheppard paused. “That’s not the point.”
“Yes it is,” Rodney said, peculiarly hurt by Sheppard’s persistently noncommittal responses. “You wouldn’t? But, why not? I’m part of the team, the same as they are. Like the Three Musketeers, which as you well know, should have been called the Four Musketeers, but what would you expect from a French author?” He snapped his fingers, “Or, better yet, the Fantastic Four-we tell each other important stuff. Don’t you trust me?”
“Rodney, it’s not that,” Sheppard chewed his lip, grasping for the proper words. “It’s-it’s complicated.”
Sheppard purposefully withholding of information on something that had clearly thoroughly shaken him felt like a betrayal, almost as bad as Jennifer saying no to his marriage proposal. Rodney thought-no, he was completely, absolutely certain that he and Sheppard were actual, honest to goodness best friends. For Pete’s sake, this was the guy he had turned to when he had been losing his memories and intellect, regressing to childhood, practically blabbering like a complete idiot. Even when he had forgotten who he was, he had known instinctively that he could trust Sheppard. Obviously, Sheppard did not reciprocate this certainty.
“Complicated? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You either trust me enough to tell me whatever it is that you are hiding or you don’t. I told you everything that I remember about what happened to me at the hands of the Wraith. Everything.” Rodney was pretty sure he was telling the truth. “No matter how potentially humiliating.”
Because he was forcing himself to be unusually observant, Rodney noticed Sheppard’s suddenly flushed complexion as he chewed his lower lip.
Sheppard’s anger at him seemed to dissipate. “Look, Rodney, with what the Wraith did to you, it’s amazing how you managed to stay true to yourself. You should be proud for being the worst Wraith ever, not feeding and shooting like a panicky human. And, most of all, for realizing that you weren’t one of them.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Thanks, I guess. But I should have figured it out much sooner before-before all the damage that I caused as a Wraith. The people that got killed …”
“It wasn't your fault.”
“It definitely feels like it was,” said Rodney.
“Yeah, I can relate to that,” Sheppard said. After a long staring contest that made Rodney feel as if he was under a microscope, he added, “Fine, I’ll tell you. But not now. I have another meeting with Woolsey. Meet me at twenty-two hundred hours in the West observation room. Do you remember how to get there?”
“Yes, of course,” Rodney said.
“In the meantime, take it easy, Rodney, and stay away from secured files. They are secured for good reasons.”
---------------------------
When Rodney arrived at the appointed time, Sheppard was already in the room, standing by the glass wall that looked out over the dark ocean. Because the room faced away from the lights of the Atlantis towers, they had a magnificent view of a star-filled night.
Sheppard turned around and said, “I am going to tell you what happened, but first you have to agree to abide by my conditions, without whining or otherwise trying to negotiate for a better deal.”
“But, but why?” Rodney asked, perplexed by the strange request.
“No arguments,” said Sheppard, his gaze locked on him.
Rodney sighed, “This is crazy, but go ahead and name your conditions.”
Sheppard walked over to the wall by the doorway. A small wall panel slid open, letting out chilly air. As he pulled out a six-pack of beer, Rodney wondered how many other rooms had these hidden Ancient refrigerators and why Sheppard hadn't told him about them. He bit back the urge to complain.
In the low light he couldn't read the label but the tall, dark amber bottles looked like good stuff. Not that it mattered; he hadn't had any beer or other kind of Earth liquor in so long that anything would be considered good stuff right now.
“First condition is that we are going to drink a couple of these before I start.”
“Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable,” Rodney said.
“Second, you have to promise me that you will never again hack or even attempt to hack my medical and psych files.” Sheppard had that intense look that was usually reserved for recalcitrant troops that had royally messed up. It kind of reminded Rodney of the frosty times after Doranda. “Promise me that, Rodney.”
“Fine, I promise not to hack into any of your records ever again. Look, I’m truly sorry about that, it’s just …” Rodney was saved from trying to come up with a reasonable excuse by Sheppard handing him an opened beer bottle. “Thanks.”
Sheppard took a long slug from his bottle before speaking again. “Third, and this is also a deal breaker, Rodney, you have to promise me or, better yet, swear on the Holy Grail of the ZPMs or whatever deity or other thing works for you, that from now on you will absolutely, positively stop making Captain Kirk jokes at my expense.”
Rodney almost spit out a mouthful. It would have been a great waste. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. I mean it, Rodney. From now to eternity, you will no longer make me the butt of your Kirk jokes. Swear or the deal is off.”
Rodney had rarely seen his friend look so earnest. Sheppard had put his bottle down on the window sill and folded his arms across his chest. A pose that in most people would be considered defensive but on him it emanated a menacing if-you-defy-me-I-will-kick-your-ass or, worse yet, never-confide-in-you-again message.
What the heck had he talked himself into? Maybe he didn't want to know what had hurt Sheppard so deeply. But to retreat now, after all his pushing and prodding, would be cowardly. Rodney placed his bottle next to Sheppard’s and held up his right arm. “Alright, alright. I do solemnly swear on my parents’ graves that I will never again utter a Kirk joke at your expense. Is that good enough or do you want to parse it out to make sure that I didn't sneak in some ultra-clever loopholes?”
“Nah, that works for me.” Sheppard finally cracked a smile. He patted Rodney’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
Sheppard grabbed his bottle with one hand and the six-pack with the other. Then he sat down on the edge of the nearest bench. With three walls of floor to ceiling windows, this room provided the closest approximation to being outdoors in Atlantis. The longing looks Sheppard gave at the view left no doubt that if it hadn't been unbearably cold out there-even for the guy who professed to like Antarctica-he would much rather be sitting on the furthest edge of a dock, his feet dangling over the dark waters.
Sheppard patted the empty spot next to him and pointed to the six-pack. “Now, we are going to have our drinks and then I’ll tell you what you missed.”
“Excellent plan,” said Rodney taking up the invitation to sit down.
They drank their first bottles in silence-except for a few well-placed burps. They were both obviously a bit out of practice imbibing any fermented beverages.
“So, let me guess,” Sheppard said, putting his empty bottle back in the cardboard bin. “Ronon is obviously Thing and you have me pegged as Johnny Storm and yourself as Mister Fantastic. I’m good with being a flying human torch and, I guess, you could pass as a scientific genius but you’re completely delusional if you think that you’re the leader of our group. Also, how does it work with Teyla being the Invisible Woman? As Sue Storm she is definitely not marrying your Mister Fantastic.”
Of all things, this stuff, these conversations with Sheppard about comic book superheroes and other inane subjects were among the things he had missed the most during his time with the Wraith. Despite their vast scientific knowledge, even the smartest of Wraith clevermen were no fun to hang around; they utterly lacked a sense of humor.
He unscrewed two fresh bottles and handed one to Sheppard. “I didn’t say that it was a perfect analogy. It was the best I could come up under pressure.” He shrugged. “By the way, congratulations on you and Teyla. It’s great. I’m very happy for you both. I really am.”
They clinked their bottles in a toast and dutifully worked on draining them. Rodney sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have to go pee in the middle of Sheppard’s wretched story.
After a few hefty slugs, he began his story. Since, for once in his life, Rodney did not interrupt him, he was up by two bottles by the time Sheppard finished his account.
“Wow,” he said. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah,” said Sheppard, eyeing his still half-full second bottle. “That cost me almost two weeks that I should have spent finding you.”
“Well, I wish I had been here to help find you,” Rodney said.
Rodney watched his friend chug down the remains of the bottle as he stared out the window. Now, teal and burnt-orange glowing whorls lit up the blue-black sky. This nightly aurora borealis show beat anything he had ever seen on Earth, even in Siberia. Alcohol and the beauty of nature were a good way to try to ease the pain of life. If only they had time for more of both.
What Sheppard had gone through sickened him. While he had lived in relative luxury and blissful ignorance as a Wraith-treated well, except for the kidnapping and forced-surgery/molecular tinkering-his friend had been kidnapped, tortured and abused purely for the pleasure of a sadist and her equally cruel guards. Sheppard hadn’t given any specifics about what was done to him, except admitting that he had been raped multiple times-which was an incredibly courageous and unprecedented admission in Rodney’s book.
As he wiped his mouth from the last dregs of beer, Rodney’s mind connected the dots that he had not been even remotely interested in connecting. Sheppard had not been the only one sexually abused; Kharla must have been too, which would explain her need for miscarriage-inducing drugs. Poor kid. At the very least, what he had observed of her in the infirmary suggested that she was now in a good place, moving on with her life and so on. Taking a sidelong glance at his friend, Rodney wondered if Sheppard knew. Of course, he would never ask. He truly regretted reading those files.
“Maybe, thirty years from now when we are cranky old men chugging down beers over a game of chess, we’ll find these stories funny,” he said, trying to lighten up the mood.
“I doubt it,” said Sheppard.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“So what are you going to do about your hair?” Sheppard’s voice sounded suddenly cheerful.
Rodney reflexively touched his head. “My hair is fine.”
“You’re right; it makes you look like Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Very cool. Maybe we should watch it again when we have time for another movie night.”
“You just want to make fun of me in front of Ronon and Teyla,” Rodney said.
“How could you possibly think that? I just love that movie,” Sheppard thought for a minute, mischief in his eyes. “Or, if you want, I could dig up the Star Trek Next Generation episodes, when Picard gets turned into a Borg.”
“No,” Rodney nearly choked on the beer in the rush to protest that truly evil suggestion. “Back to the Future is a much better idea.”
The End
Go back to Chapters 1& 2