Fic: SGA: The Other Side of Silence
Dec. 16th, 2005 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lemonbellaLook! Fic. Not sure about this one, but I had to post it or I'd delete it from my hard drive in a fit of pique.
Title: The Other Side of Silence (title stolen from an Andre Brink novel)
Rating: R (for theme - not for the faint hearted)
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Archive: Yes
Summary: "On his worst nights, it isn't Wraith or bugs or Sumner that John dreams about, it's Rodney, hollow and broken, silently begging to be left behind."
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kitkat3979 for the beta, indian_skimmer for the advice, fringedweller for the enthusiastic read through and justabi for the beta which Yahoo stole.
~~~
It wasn't that it was hard to rescue Rodney. In fact, it was ridiculously easy to negotiate his return once they'd found where he was being held. It was just that it took so long to find him in the first place.
When the Calteran guard entered the Stargate chamber, leading Rodney, John had immediately regretted his decision to negotiate instead of using force. If he'd known how desperate the silence would be when he asked Rodney if he was okay; if he'd known how frantic Rodney would be to get away from them all when he got back to Atlantis, John would have pushed harder for overwhelming force, even at the risk of losing Rodney.
On his worst nights, it isn’t Wraith or bugs or Sumner that John dreams about, it's Rodney in that chamber, hollow and broken, silently begging to be left behind.
~~~
When Carson finally tracked Rodney down in one of the outer labs, he'd tried to take him to the infirmary, but Rodney had fought back so urgently, still eerily quiet, that Carson dismissed the rest of the medical staff, and started the examination right there. He talked in soothing tones as he checked out each limb, pressing and prodding, watching carefully for any signs of pain, or any kind of reaction at all. Rodney simply nodded or shook his head in answer to the questions, his blue eyes staring intently at Carson the entire time.
"What happened, Rodney?" Carson asked as he moved on to examine Rodney's face and neck.
Rodney looked away, and Carson knew it wasn't that he hadn't understood, just that he didn’t want to comply. Carson sighed, and shone a light into each of Rodney's eyes.
"You need to talk to someone, Rodney, and if not me, it'll have to be Heightmeyer. Talking things through will hel…"
Rodney opened his mouth wide, under pressure from Carson's gloved fingers, and Carson froze mid-word and mid-movement, his pen light shining into Rodney's mouth.
And Rodney's eyes said, "The irony is killing me."
~~~
"They removed his tongue," Carson repeated for the third time, Elizabeth and John staring at him in incomprehension.
Elizabeth asked, "Why?" at the same time John asked, "How?"
"Surgically. It doesn't look like it was...torture."
"It sounds like fucking torture to me." John stood up to pace the room.
"Why?" Elizabeth repeated, sending a pleading look to Carson.
"It's anyone's guess. You said the Calterans said he was uncooperative?"
John stopped in mid pace and turned to face Carson. "They didn't say he was uncooperative. They said he kept asking questions."
The three stood in silence as the implication became clear.
"Jesus fucking Christ," John yelled, slamming his hand into the door frame as he left the room.
~~~
When John returned from the Calteran planet he was expecting marines to arrest him as soon as he stepped out of the Puddle Jumper. Instead, he just found Elizabeth standing there, relief on her face.
"Is it done?" she asked simply.
John nodded in reply, not even trying to hide the relief on his own face, and then he turned and headed straight for Rodney's quarters.
Rodney opened the door with an irritated frown, and all John could think to say was, "I killed them." Rodney merely nodded and palmed the door controls, staring at the floor until the door slid shut.
~~~
John didn't like this conversation. He didn't like what was being said, and he didn’t like the dispassionate way Rodney was staring at each person in turn as they detailed his recent actions.
John had been in the mess when Rodney had stormed out in response to Elizabeth trying to teach him sign language, an abandoned lunch tray testament to Rodney's embarrassment.
He knew from Zelenka that Rodney hadn't been back to the labs since Heightmeyer had installed the talking computer on his desk, half completed projects testament to Rodney's frustration.
He had disengaged the marines who'd restrained Rodney after Carson had tried to show him how to use the voice synthesiser, a chair through the door of a glass cabinet testament to Rodney's anger.
And, on each occasion, John had heard the words that Rodney was bursting to say, loud and clear. John wondered why no one else could hear them.
Elizabeth is talking about sending Rodney back to Earth, under the guise of recovery, everyone in the room knowing that he won't be coming back. It's only this unspoken knowledge and agreement, Rodney's blankness and resignation, which remind John that he is the one in the room who can speak.
"You can't do that, Elizabeth."
"Rodney's not leaving us much choice." John hates the way it's so easy for everyone to talk about Rodney as if he isn't in the room.
"We need him here, the Wraith are coming. It's…home"
Caldwell interrupts him with a critical sigh. "Sentimentality aside, the problem needs to be solved. Do you have any useful suggestions Colonel?"
John wants to hit Caldwell then, more so than usual. The problem.
"Maybe you should just leave him alone. He's Rodney, he can solve it himself."
Rodney catches his eye then, before he gets up and walks out of the room. John can't figure out if Rodney is angry or relieved, but Elizabeth agrees to postpone the discussion until the Daedelus is next due to leave for Earth, so he considers it a victory.
~~~
Rodney turns up at his quarters later that night, dressed in boxer shorts and a t-shirt. He doesn't even wait for John to invite him in, before he pushes him roughly against the wall. When Rodney doesn't let John kiss him, John doesn't question it, because it's the first time he's ever felt that it was actually Rodney they brought home and not some hollowed-out shell. Rodney talks with his hands all over John's body, undressing and caressing, and he manages to say so much more than they ever got around to saying before.
When John wakes up alone in the early hours, he isn't surprised, but he finds it easy to roll over and go back to sleep, because something tells him the conversation isn't over.
Rodney turns up with two laptops a few nights later and they lay side by side on John's bed watching Back to the Future. The first time John opens his mouth, Rodney powers up the second laptop and opens a file in which he's detailed all of the scientific inaccuracies, scene by scene, together with a few choice words about the intellectual ability of anyone who could believe it would be that simple. Later, when Rodney is asleep, naked and hogging all the pillows, John scans the other files and makes a note of the films he needs to order from the next Daedelus run.
John doesn't remember the exact moment he stopped translating Rodney's looks and gestures into the words Rodney would be saying if he could. All he knows is that he can no longer remember what Rodney's voice sounds like, but he knows that each look indicates a slightly different level of infuriation, and each gesture infers a graduated scale of sarcasm, and the huffs and sighs form the letters of Rodney's shorthand that he types on the laptop when they're alone.
~~~
Radek arrives in the lab to find a note stuck on his laptop, signed by Colonel Sheppard.
"Rodney is right, everyone really is an idiot."
He takes it as permission, and dismantles the stupid talking computer. He leaves it in pieces on the desk and sends an e-mail to Rodney saying that they could use his help in the lab, the same one he's sent every morning since Rodney returned. When he hasn't shown his face by that evening, Radek sends another telling him the lab is empty.
The next morning the computer pieces are gone and Rodney is working at his desk, head down, tapping insistently at his laptop. Yesterday's equations are corrected on the whiteboard in red, together with the annotation: "Are you really this stupid, or have you been sniffing the magic markers again?"
Words were never really necessary, certainly less so for him than others, when it has always felt slightly alien to converse in English. His role had been to fill in the spaces for Rodney, so it's the spaces he concentrates on.
When the science team stop coming to him for direction, and instead approach Rodney's desk, Radek can only breathe a sigh of relief and set up a whiteboard in the corridor on which Rodney can scrawl his instructions. The team's productivity is higher than it's ever been, and Radek can only conclude that a question concerning the veracity of one's doctorate must seem more serious when displayed in public.
Radek doesn't remember the exact moment it happens, but one day he realises he doesn't speak in the lab at all. It's all just sounds, and waving arms, and watching for the pause in Rodney's thought processes. It's only when a technician looks at him blankly that he remembers he can speak at all.
Sometimes, Radek feels like Rodney is the same as he always was, but occasionally, late at night when the rest of the team have left and don’t need his scrawled directions, Rodney's different. He's more intense, as if all the energy he used to pour into words has been redirected to his thoughts. If the intensity scares Radek a little, he doesn't mention it, because he thinks that maybe it scares Rodney more.
Instead, Radek suggests they work on the CPU of the Ancient systems, whilst the rest of the team continue with the subsidiary devices. Previously, they'd never progressed further than frustration with foreign code and seemingly nonsensical subroutines. Now, though, Rodney devotes all his effort to the problem and it isn’t long before he's cracked the coding programme.
~~~
It begins with a few confused scientists and gradually spreads throughout all the personnel. It ends with a furious Caldwell calling Zelenka, Rodney and Sheppard to the morning briefing a full hour before it's due to start. For once, John has absolutely no idea what he's about to be reprimanded for, but by the grin on Rodney's face, he's guilty by association.
Eventually, Elizabeth has to leap in, because Rodney's smirk isn't going away, and Caldwell seems to find it more irritating than when Rodney would answer back.
"Can anyone explain these…anomalies?"
Radek stands in response to a nod from Rodney and explains 'Project Omnipresent' in scientific terms, and then again in more practical terms, leaving out the programming language. He says it means they're getting closer to unlocking all of Atlantis' secrets. He says it means they can reduce their workload by a quarter. He says it means that by using the newly installed protocols, they can instruct Atlantis remotely. John smiles because he knows exactly what it means.
It takes Elizabeth two hours to review the list of error messages, instructions and reminders Atlantis had issued, in Ancient, over the last two weeks, to anyone who had connected to the mainframe. She divides them into piles according to the nature of their instruction, and then according to the degree of insult inferred, and then, finally, according to the presence or absence of swear words. When she's finished, she doesn't ask Rodney to change a thing.
~~~
On his best nights, John doesn't dream at all, he just whispers, "You made Atlantis talk," and Rodney kisses him until they're both out of breath.
~~~
Feedback and con crit appreciated.
Title: The Other Side of Silence (title stolen from an Andre Brink novel)
Rating: R (for theme - not for the faint hearted)
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Archive: Yes
Summary: "On his worst nights, it isn't Wraith or bugs or Sumner that John dreams about, it's Rodney, hollow and broken, silently begging to be left behind."
Many thanks to
kitkat3979 for the beta, indian_skimmer for the advice, fringedweller for the enthusiastic read through and justabi for the beta which Yahoo stole. ~~~
It wasn't that it was hard to rescue Rodney. In fact, it was ridiculously easy to negotiate his return once they'd found where he was being held. It was just that it took so long to find him in the first place.
When the Calteran guard entered the Stargate chamber, leading Rodney, John had immediately regretted his decision to negotiate instead of using force. If he'd known how desperate the silence would be when he asked Rodney if he was okay; if he'd known how frantic Rodney would be to get away from them all when he got back to Atlantis, John would have pushed harder for overwhelming force, even at the risk of losing Rodney.
On his worst nights, it isn’t Wraith or bugs or Sumner that John dreams about, it's Rodney in that chamber, hollow and broken, silently begging to be left behind.
~~~
When Carson finally tracked Rodney down in one of the outer labs, he'd tried to take him to the infirmary, but Rodney had fought back so urgently, still eerily quiet, that Carson dismissed the rest of the medical staff, and started the examination right there. He talked in soothing tones as he checked out each limb, pressing and prodding, watching carefully for any signs of pain, or any kind of reaction at all. Rodney simply nodded or shook his head in answer to the questions, his blue eyes staring intently at Carson the entire time.
"What happened, Rodney?" Carson asked as he moved on to examine Rodney's face and neck.
Rodney looked away, and Carson knew it wasn't that he hadn't understood, just that he didn’t want to comply. Carson sighed, and shone a light into each of Rodney's eyes.
"You need to talk to someone, Rodney, and if not me, it'll have to be Heightmeyer. Talking things through will hel…"
Rodney opened his mouth wide, under pressure from Carson's gloved fingers, and Carson froze mid-word and mid-movement, his pen light shining into Rodney's mouth.
And Rodney's eyes said, "The irony is killing me."
~~~
"They removed his tongue," Carson repeated for the third time, Elizabeth and John staring at him in incomprehension.
Elizabeth asked, "Why?" at the same time John asked, "How?"
"Surgically. It doesn't look like it was...torture."
"It sounds like fucking torture to me." John stood up to pace the room.
"Why?" Elizabeth repeated, sending a pleading look to Carson.
"It's anyone's guess. You said the Calterans said he was uncooperative?"
John stopped in mid pace and turned to face Carson. "They didn't say he was uncooperative. They said he kept asking questions."
The three stood in silence as the implication became clear.
"Jesus fucking Christ," John yelled, slamming his hand into the door frame as he left the room.
~~~
When John returned from the Calteran planet he was expecting marines to arrest him as soon as he stepped out of the Puddle Jumper. Instead, he just found Elizabeth standing there, relief on her face.
"Is it done?" she asked simply.
John nodded in reply, not even trying to hide the relief on his own face, and then he turned and headed straight for Rodney's quarters.
Rodney opened the door with an irritated frown, and all John could think to say was, "I killed them." Rodney merely nodded and palmed the door controls, staring at the floor until the door slid shut.
~~~
John didn't like this conversation. He didn't like what was being said, and he didn’t like the dispassionate way Rodney was staring at each person in turn as they detailed his recent actions.
John had been in the mess when Rodney had stormed out in response to Elizabeth trying to teach him sign language, an abandoned lunch tray testament to Rodney's embarrassment.
He knew from Zelenka that Rodney hadn't been back to the labs since Heightmeyer had installed the talking computer on his desk, half completed projects testament to Rodney's frustration.
He had disengaged the marines who'd restrained Rodney after Carson had tried to show him how to use the voice synthesiser, a chair through the door of a glass cabinet testament to Rodney's anger.
And, on each occasion, John had heard the words that Rodney was bursting to say, loud and clear. John wondered why no one else could hear them.
Elizabeth is talking about sending Rodney back to Earth, under the guise of recovery, everyone in the room knowing that he won't be coming back. It's only this unspoken knowledge and agreement, Rodney's blankness and resignation, which remind John that he is the one in the room who can speak.
"You can't do that, Elizabeth."
"Rodney's not leaving us much choice." John hates the way it's so easy for everyone to talk about Rodney as if he isn't in the room.
"We need him here, the Wraith are coming. It's…home"
Caldwell interrupts him with a critical sigh. "Sentimentality aside, the problem needs to be solved. Do you have any useful suggestions Colonel?"
John wants to hit Caldwell then, more so than usual. The problem.
"Maybe you should just leave him alone. He's Rodney, he can solve it himself."
Rodney catches his eye then, before he gets up and walks out of the room. John can't figure out if Rodney is angry or relieved, but Elizabeth agrees to postpone the discussion until the Daedelus is next due to leave for Earth, so he considers it a victory.
~~~
Rodney turns up at his quarters later that night, dressed in boxer shorts and a t-shirt. He doesn't even wait for John to invite him in, before he pushes him roughly against the wall. When Rodney doesn't let John kiss him, John doesn't question it, because it's the first time he's ever felt that it was actually Rodney they brought home and not some hollowed-out shell. Rodney talks with his hands all over John's body, undressing and caressing, and he manages to say so much more than they ever got around to saying before.
When John wakes up alone in the early hours, he isn't surprised, but he finds it easy to roll over and go back to sleep, because something tells him the conversation isn't over.
Rodney turns up with two laptops a few nights later and they lay side by side on John's bed watching Back to the Future. The first time John opens his mouth, Rodney powers up the second laptop and opens a file in which he's detailed all of the scientific inaccuracies, scene by scene, together with a few choice words about the intellectual ability of anyone who could believe it would be that simple. Later, when Rodney is asleep, naked and hogging all the pillows, John scans the other files and makes a note of the films he needs to order from the next Daedelus run.
John doesn't remember the exact moment he stopped translating Rodney's looks and gestures into the words Rodney would be saying if he could. All he knows is that he can no longer remember what Rodney's voice sounds like, but he knows that each look indicates a slightly different level of infuriation, and each gesture infers a graduated scale of sarcasm, and the huffs and sighs form the letters of Rodney's shorthand that he types on the laptop when they're alone.
~~~
Radek arrives in the lab to find a note stuck on his laptop, signed by Colonel Sheppard.
"Rodney is right, everyone really is an idiot."
He takes it as permission, and dismantles the stupid talking computer. He leaves it in pieces on the desk and sends an e-mail to Rodney saying that they could use his help in the lab, the same one he's sent every morning since Rodney returned. When he hasn't shown his face by that evening, Radek sends another telling him the lab is empty.
The next morning the computer pieces are gone and Rodney is working at his desk, head down, tapping insistently at his laptop. Yesterday's equations are corrected on the whiteboard in red, together with the annotation: "Are you really this stupid, or have you been sniffing the magic markers again?"
Words were never really necessary, certainly less so for him than others, when it has always felt slightly alien to converse in English. His role had been to fill in the spaces for Rodney, so it's the spaces he concentrates on.
When the science team stop coming to him for direction, and instead approach Rodney's desk, Radek can only breathe a sigh of relief and set up a whiteboard in the corridor on which Rodney can scrawl his instructions. The team's productivity is higher than it's ever been, and Radek can only conclude that a question concerning the veracity of one's doctorate must seem more serious when displayed in public.
Radek doesn't remember the exact moment it happens, but one day he realises he doesn't speak in the lab at all. It's all just sounds, and waving arms, and watching for the pause in Rodney's thought processes. It's only when a technician looks at him blankly that he remembers he can speak at all.
Sometimes, Radek feels like Rodney is the same as he always was, but occasionally, late at night when the rest of the team have left and don’t need his scrawled directions, Rodney's different. He's more intense, as if all the energy he used to pour into words has been redirected to his thoughts. If the intensity scares Radek a little, he doesn't mention it, because he thinks that maybe it scares Rodney more.
Instead, Radek suggests they work on the CPU of the Ancient systems, whilst the rest of the team continue with the subsidiary devices. Previously, they'd never progressed further than frustration with foreign code and seemingly nonsensical subroutines. Now, though, Rodney devotes all his effort to the problem and it isn’t long before he's cracked the coding programme.
~~~
It begins with a few confused scientists and gradually spreads throughout all the personnel. It ends with a furious Caldwell calling Zelenka, Rodney and Sheppard to the morning briefing a full hour before it's due to start. For once, John has absolutely no idea what he's about to be reprimanded for, but by the grin on Rodney's face, he's guilty by association.
Eventually, Elizabeth has to leap in, because Rodney's smirk isn't going away, and Caldwell seems to find it more irritating than when Rodney would answer back.
"Can anyone explain these…anomalies?"
Radek stands in response to a nod from Rodney and explains 'Project Omnipresent' in scientific terms, and then again in more practical terms, leaving out the programming language. He says it means they're getting closer to unlocking all of Atlantis' secrets. He says it means they can reduce their workload by a quarter. He says it means that by using the newly installed protocols, they can instruct Atlantis remotely. John smiles because he knows exactly what it means.
It takes Elizabeth two hours to review the list of error messages, instructions and reminders Atlantis had issued, in Ancient, over the last two weeks, to anyone who had connected to the mainframe. She divides them into piles according to the nature of their instruction, and then according to the degree of insult inferred, and then, finally, according to the presence or absence of swear words. When she's finished, she doesn't ask Rodney to change a thing.
~~~
On his best nights, John doesn't dream at all, he just whispers, "You made Atlantis talk," and Rodney kisses him until they're both out of breath.
~~~
Feedback and con crit appreciated.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 01:44 pm (UTC)I always warn for non-con, kink, character death; it's the more detailed, spoilery ones I have issue with, not so much because of plot reasons but because you really can't warn for everything and readers do have to take responsibility themselves. It feels a bit like McDonald's having to warn for their coffee being hot, you know?
I do understand that this is a hot topic, and I tend not to appreciate it fully because I'm not at all squeamish. I hope the new warning makes sure that people don't stumble accross this unintentionally.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 03:29 pm (UTC)I'm glad about the victim thing as well. People are usually far more victims to other peoples' reactions rather than events themselves.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 10:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-22 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 07:51 am (UTC)Anyway. My much belated opinion and comment from person-you-don't-know is that damn this is good, and also, if you write something you figure you're going to get nailed for not warning for, you can stick the warning at the end of the fic and link to it in the header. I've done this a time or two for exactly this reason: so I don't get nailed for not warning even though I don't actually want to warn. Not that I write in this fandom; I only marginally read in it because I've seen a total of about eight episodes of the show. Still, I'm pretty good at knowing when someone violates or really nails the sort of sense of a character, and even though my canon knowledge in this fandom is limited, based on what I've seen, this really nails it. Really a lot.
And I wouldn't have warned either.
:)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 07:55 pm (UTC)I'm glad you felt this nailed Rodney's character. It's one of the few things I've written that I continue to be quite proud of, for that reason - so it's good to know I'm not deluding myself.
I might well consider putting warnings at the end in the future. I didn't do for this one because a) I slightly resent having to do it, for the reasons outlines in that post and b) At the time, I honestly didn't think it would be a problem. I have a high squick threshold and was pretty immune to the shock of it by the end of writing!
Thanks for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 10:36 pm (UTC)I have no idea how I actually got here.
Date: 2006-07-18 10:43 pm (UTC)This was just the type of Atlantis Fic I needed. (after some serious lack of warning on some other fics ::shudders::)
absolutely hilarious!
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 10:45 pm (UTC)I really liked how Rodney wasn't "handicapped". It's amazing what body&mind can accomplish went pushed to do so.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 09:12 pm (UTC)I'm glad the humour came across and that Rodney didn't seem too disabled by what happened.
yes, it was gruesome. and I was all omgwtf! poor Rodney.
But actually, as I read on, he didn't seem disabled to me at all. which is why I liked it so much. and when I stopped thinking poor Rodney and more Yay Rodney!
communication is a tricky and complex thing. I never really saw mute people as disabled. (okay, with no tongue there are other issues, but I'm ignoring them here because I honestly don't want to think about it too much.) You just need to use a different kind of language/communication system. In this case kinda like being stranded somewhere where you don't know the language.
::beat:: with a lot more physical and emotional trauma at the beginning.
...
okay, I get the feeling I'm not communicating this right so i'll just up now and just say, again, that I really liked the story, and that it's so different from what's out there.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-05 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 05:12 am (UTC)Con crit. Well, I'd like to say that the ending is rather abrupt, but honestly I think it's more a stylistic choice on your part than a problem. I think it's actually a very effective ending. *rereads again* Okay, every time I read it, I just... it just stops. And I get ready to be disappointed, but the end just makes me think more about what was already presented. So. Lack of con crit, I guess.
Beautiful story. Thanks for sharing. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 04:18 pm (UTC)It does end abruptly, and plenty of people wanted it to be longer. A part of me wanted that too, but anything I added failed to add to the story, and my biggest rule when writing is not to use anything that doesn't contribute to the story. It's a cliche, but less is more.
Thanks again.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-19 08:12 pm (UTC)I wish I could give you a more coherent feedback. Liked it a lot.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-20 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 06:48 am (UTC)Liked this story. Even though it is making my tongue freak out. Ahemmmm.