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The silence is killing him slowly.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Days? Weeks? More than hours he thinks, but there are no temporal markers to be found in the perpetual darkness. It’s been long enough that his stomach has stopped waging war with him, no longer panging with hunger or rumbling when he exhales, and has fallen still and inexorably silent. A distant part of his mind—the part that isn’t mapping constellations in the firing of his optical nerves against the absolute pitch black surrounding him—recognises that it’s not a good thing.
The pain he can deal with, the isolation too, but the silence is thicker than the darkness and it’s been so long since he heard footsteps, voices, the creaking of a door...anything but the stubborn thumping of his heart and the rasping of his breath. He knows he has a broken rib or two in the way his chest twinges on each expansion, but sometimes he gets so breathless he thinks there might be something worse going on than a simple fracture. He can taste metal when he coughs, though he’s barely even doing that anymore. If Jennifer were here, she’d instruct him to take deep inhalations and push through the pain to keep his lungs from giving up the ghost.
The thing is...the thing is, he’s on the cusp of losing the will to care.
For a while he held on to hope, secure in the knowledge that his team had made it to the gate and that they’d be coming for him any minute. But the moments ticked by, flowing through his fingers like sand, and his resolve started to break under the ever-increasing tally of heartbeats that he’s long given up counting.
He has regrets, God, does he have regrets. He’ll never hear Torren’s first word or see his first steps. He should have told Teyla what a wonderful mother she is, a strong leader, a good friend...but that she is so much more to him than what she gives freely to others. Ronon will never know how proud he is to call him a brother, that he’s the best damn soldier he’s ever had the pleasure of serving with, that he’s grateful...so grateful that he took a chance on them instead of listening to seven years" worth of survival and going it alone. Rodney...Rodney will never know how much he...
Something breaks through the sensory void. At first, he thinks it’s in his mind; that he’s finally cracking under the torment. It’s almost a relief that it’s finally come. Those under his command think him unshakeable, unbreakable, but he’s always known that every man has a limit.
Thus far shall you come and no farther.
The sense-memory of his father should spark ire, but there’s something comforting in the sound of his voice. Tangible. Fitting that it’s his words he hears in his final moments of lucidity. The military can train and simulate, educate and advise, but there will come a point in every captive"s imprisonment when they sink or swim, and John thinks that the ocean knocking at his mind’s door is sounding ravenous right about now.
And here shall your proud waves be stopped.
Only...that’s not it. That’s not what he’s hearing at all. Footsteps, furiously tapping on stone, getting louder and louder, and over the top a voice, a real voice, penetrating through the silence and bouncing off the walls of the passageway outside.
“I hope you’re proud of yourselves. When did you last wash your grubby hands? The sanitation here is practically medieval. The waves of Teahupoo couldn’t wash away all that filth!”
The sound is so familiar and welcome that for a moment his heart swells with joy until the words sink in and he realises what they mean. John tries to call out, but his mouth is so well gagged and his throat still so raw that his voice doesn’t even reach the walls of his cell. He winces as warm light flickers through a gap under the door in front of him, dim like a candle but blinding after so long in the dark. The marching comes to a halt, and there are moving silhouettes in the line of light as metal scrapes against metal. Rodney’s diatribe doesn’t stop as even as a heavy door is opened and barely pauses when he’s dropped to the ground with an oof.
The door scrapes again, and the boots leave back the way they came, Rodney insulting their intelligence and their hygiene and their rough handling of delicate scientists until long after the last flicker of light has been overcome with shadow. As he complains, he paces, and John follows Rodney’s laps around his cell with the clarity of his voice until anger finally gives way to fear and all John can hear anymore is quiet sobbing. John would give anything to be able to comfort Rodney and spare him from the misery to come in his perceived solitude, but his mouth is gagged and his hands are tied behind him, the rope around his wrists suspended from the ceiling so that he can do nothing but lean forward over knees that have lost all sensation.
The sobs don’t last, and John’s enfolded once again in silence, the heavy wooden doors too thick for quieter sounds of life to slip through. He tries several times to make a sound loud enough for Rodney to hear, but with no voice to speak of and no way to strike morse code into the walls his efforts are in vain. Rodney can"t hear his paltry grunts and now John can’t hear anything at all.
When the screaming starts, John had all but convinced himself that Rodney’s voice had been a hallucination. It’s been quiet for so long, the silence and the darkness so heavy that it couldn’t possibly have been real, but there’s nothing imaginary in the desperate howling and pleading and begging coming from across the hall.
Rodney cries out for him, for Teyla, for Ronon; the three people in two galaxies that he trusts the most to keep him safe. John strains against his bindings but he is weak and the ropes are tight. He couldn’t escape them back when he was first captured, he has no chance now that his entire body is drained of energy. All he can do is listen to Rodney"s cries, his own furious sobs caught in the cloth between his teeth. Tears are rolling down his face and his nose is dripping and all he can think is he’d give anything, anything, for Rodney’s screaming to stop.
It does, and for a split-second John feels a reprieve, relief for Rodney that his hurt has stopped even if it"s only for a little while. But then the door to Rodney"s cell is opened wide, and then his, and as he winces at the bright light, his aching eyes landing on Rodney kneeling directly opposite him, blood dripping through the cloth in his mouth and an expression so full of pain and fear that it is louder than any sound he’s ever made.
And then the figure steps into the light and John strains his neck and looks up to see the face of their captor. The last time John saw Torrell, he was running for the Stargate, fleeing the Wraith and the Olesian Magistrate that had convicted him of nearly a dozen murders. John never imagined those deaths were something other than political opportunism or desperation, but now, with Torrell’s pale eyes boring into him, he realises he is looking at something more dangerous than a simple killer.
Torrell doesn’t smile, but John can feel the satisfaction rolling off of him as he presents his trophy. John doesn’t want to look, but his eyes flick to Rodney"s bloody tongue dripping between Torrell’s finger and thumb and he feels something in his entire being shatter to fragments; as many as the number of pieces Torrell promises to cut Rodney into.