Chapter Text
Rodney gave up after he had marked off the sixth month on his wall. John would have come for him, which is if he knew where Rodney was. If John was still alive there was nothing in this galaxy, or any other, that would have stopped him from coming and rescuing Rodney. So that meant one of a few things; one, John was unable to rescue Rodney; two, John didn't know where Rodney was; or three, the possibility he didn't even want to consider, John was dead.
It was so repetitive; he would be dragged from his cell and chained to the workstation he had been given. Rodney had protested at first, he was a genius, how could they treat him this way? But he had had the fight beaten out of him after the first two months. Now he just shuffled his way through the rock covered walls and dank, dark rooms to where he belonged. The smell choked him sometimes, after awhile he realized it was his own body odor. Bathing wasn't high on his captor's list of priorities. Besides, they had no olfactory organs, not that Rodney could see anyway.
He dreamed at night. It only made things worse though. He dreamed of John and the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin and how it felt as they moved together. He dreamed of soft, cool, glowing blue lights and a city that hummed him to sleep. He dreamed of his friend's and food. Rodney would wake with tears on his face; their path's the only clean spot on his hollow cheeks. He would scratch at his concave stomach and wonder if he was thinner than John now.
Rodney's wrists were always bleeding. The strips of cloth he had padded the shackles with were thin and almost as bad as the chains themselves. He hated when his guard dragged him to the doctor. If you could call that tall genderless freak a doctor. Rodney would give anything just to have Carson poke him one more time. Well almost anything, John was what he would give anything for but that was as much of a lost cause as seeing Carson. The doctor here poked and took way too much blood, as he made strange keening noises to the others in the room. Rodney had no hope of communicating with these people. He had known it the second the ones he had been kidnapped by spoke.
The computer had taken some getting used too. It had used something that wasn't Ancient or Wraith. It had taken him a couple of days to remember where he had seen this language before. It was the same as the virus, the one that had killed so many on his science team. These, he didn't even know what the hell to call them, things had created it. He still couldn't figure out why they wanted him. It seemed as if all he was doing was busy work, or maybe he was a lab rat and didn't know it yet. He was beginning not to care.
Sweat poured off his body as he jack knifed into a sitting position, he hated this dream. The one where he was being hauled away from John, Teyla and Dex. The one where he couldn't move, scream or barely breathe. They had to be dead, or unconscious. They would have never let him be taken otherwise. Rodney stood and marked off another day as the sun weakly filtered through a small slit that passed as a window. He looked and saw it had been over a year now.
It was in that moment Rodney knew he was dead. He was walking and breathing but he was dead. Hope was gone, so far gone in fact that he could hardly remember what it felt like. He was a pessimist, he would be the first to admit it, but there had always been a small glimmer of hope when John was near. He tossed the rock down as he slid down the wall. He was so tired and numb; fear wasn't even a factor anymore.
Now he was just flesh and empty space.