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He opens his eyes and knows nothing. Not entirely nothing--he knows the thing he is looking at is called a ceiling, and its color is called grey, basic knowledge is still intact--but he doesn't know his name or his past or anything else personal, if he even has those things.
He sits up and looks around. The room is small, square, sparsely furnished. He has the bed he awoke on, a table with a single chair, a shelf filled with books and knickknacks. To one side of the shelf is a window with a bench running underneath, and to the other is a box glowing green with symbols he doesn't recognize. One wall is a mirror. He walks to the window and tries to peer between the slats of the blinds, but there is no view to an outside world, only endless, too-bright light. His world is this cube. His only company is his reflection.
Turning from the window to the mirror, he studies himself and tries to divine meaning from what he sees. He sees a light-skinned man with dark hair and blue eyes, a strong body dressed in dark clothes. He does not see any clue beyond that.
No scars or marks, no indication of identity.
His head is starting to hurt, and he realizes there's some kind of noise around him. It's just outside the range of hearing, but it seems to come from every direction at once. He lies back down on the bed, hoping to sink back into sleep to get away from it.
The next time he opens his eyes, he sees food on the table. Nothing else in the room has changed, but the mysterious noise has stopped. He rises and eats the meal, uncaring if it is poisoned. What does it matter if nothing exists but himself?
Time passes, but he doesn't know how much. He does know that someone or something provides food twice a day, but only when he isn't looking, and sometimes the noise comes back. The amount of time the non-sound continues never seems to be the same. It sits in his mind like an itch deep beneath the skin, one that no amount of scratching can satisfy. He can tolerate it for a while each time it starts. He usually takes a book from the shelf and tries to read until it stops or he can't focus on the letters anymore. He never remembers what the books say.
On the worst days, the noise keeps going and going, preventing even sleep, shredding his nerves to the breaking point. On these days, he throws things. He throws the chair at the window, throws the food on the floor, rips pages from his books and throws them in the air. When the noise finally stops on these days, he collapses on the bed. He wakes to find the room completely set to rights again.
That he is unable to make any lasting mark on this place is the worst knowledge of all.
He wakes one day under the weight of a crushing blankness. Movement beyond breathing and blinking is unfathomable. He knows there is food on the table, can smell things he has demonstrated some small preference for over others, but his stomach never gurgles, his mind never pushes out the simple, primal command to eat. He lies there and stares at the ceiling while the mysterious noise comes and goes, until the smell of the food changes. Even then, he has no urge to eat. He just sits up and turns sideways on the bed, legs crossed and back against the wall, and directs his gaze to the mirror.
Despite how much time has passed, his appearance is unchanged. He is hellishly frozen in time. The thought lights a guttering spark of anger in him. He kindles it, getting up to go stand before the mirror, to meet his own gaze. The flame catches on a sudden hatred for his own face, and he smacks his palm against the mirror. He smacks it again, then pounds it with his fist, beats at it with his entire body. With each strike, he lets out a cry of anguish, the first sounds he can remember making in this place.
Once he's spent, he slumps down to the floor and stays there until the food changes again.
When he smells the fresh meal, he staggers to his feet and sits in front of it. He chews and swallows and very carefully does not look at the mirror again.
The day after, he wakes and eats and goes to stand in front of the mirror again. The terrible clench in his chest from yesterday doesn't come back. He stares blankly and finally catches the wisps of a thought as it flits across his mind, a deeply buried desire for something else, anything else but more of this monotonous solitary existence.
With a suddenness that terrifies him, the mirror ripple-flickers into a window, and he finds himself staring at another man. They both freeze for a long moment. They're of similar height, but the other man has light brown hair and wears glasses, and his shirt is blue. He thinks wildly that he must be hallucinating until the stranger breaks their stalemate and rushes up to the glass.
"Major!"
It's a shock to hear a voice. It's more shocking that the owner of that voice seems to recognize him. The relief he feels is enough to make his knees go watery.
"Are you all right, Major Lorne?" the man asks, the surprise in his face quickly replaced with worry.
"Who are you?" he asks--croaks--with a voice unused to forming words.
The man presses against the glass like he's trying to pass through it by force of will. "I am Dr. Radek Zelenka. You are Major Evan Lorne. You know me, we are...we are..." He stops and squeezes his eyes shut like searching for the word is physically painful. "You know me," he says again instead.
He has a name. A word for himself: Evan. He knows it's right like he knows the steady beat of his heart.
"Do you know where we are, Radek?" Evan asks, testing the name as if acknowledging another existence will dispel the illusion of him. "Do you know how long I've been here?"
Radek shakes his head. "I don't know what this place is. I have been marking time, but I can't say how accurate it is or whether it would be the same for you."
He steps back and goes to his own table to pick up a pad of paper, and Evan finally notices the room behind him. It's set up in a similar way to Evan's space, but instead of cold greys and metals, the walls are a dark yellow color, and the furniture is made of wood. It looks inviting.
Radek comes back and holds up the paper to show Evan a series of hash marks. "One mark for every two meals," he explains. "If I'm right, I have been here--been aware of being here--for thirty-two days."
Evan has nothing in his room to write with. If he had, he probably wouldn't have used it because nothing he does here stays done. But Radek can make changes. The thought makes a curl of jealousy roll over Evan, then it slides away again. He doesn't know what else to say, now. He feels strangely exhausted by this small bit of interaction with another person. The tiredness expands until he finally has to sit. Not wanting to turn his back in case Radek will vanish, Evan takes careful steps backwards until he hits the bed. He eases into position against the wall, legs crossed, eyes firmly locked on the occupant of the other room.
Maybe wherever they're from, they know each other well, because Radek just watches Evan do this and moves his own chair up to face the glass. He sits down, and he starts talking about nothing.
Evan isn't sure when he fell asleep, but he wakes up in a wild panic, sure that Radek and the other room had been a dream. The relief nearly takes his breath away when he sees everything is still there. He approaches the glass until he can rest a hand on it. Radek is asleep on his bed, curled on his side. His chair is still in front of the glass on his side, but he has left his notepad propped against the back with a note scrawled across it: “Don't worry. I'm still here.”
While he waits for Radek to wake up, Evan eats. By the time he finishes, Radek is stirring and gives him a sleepy smile as he stretches out over the bed. The sight charms Evan. It also raises a protectiveness in him, a deep and almost-familiar need to look out for Radek and to look after him.
"You sleep okay?" Evan asks for lack of anything else to say. His mind is crowded with half-formed questions that Radek won't have answers to.
"Well enough," he replies as he makes his way to his own breakfast. "And you?"
"Better than I have been," Evan tells him after a moment of thought. Except for the fear upon waking, he realizes he did get a better rest than he has since he's been here. Radek's presence has calmed something inside him.
They don't talk for a while, Evan just watches Radek eat. Then he watches Radek take the pad of paper with him back to the bed and start writing. Evan wants to know what he's writing, but he doesn't want to ask. He thinks Radek will tell him later. After a while, Radek looks up like he's going to say something, but he must see something on Evan's face that changes his mind, because he simply smiles and goes back to work.
When their second meal appears, Radek looks surprised at how much time has passed.
"Have you moved at all today?" he asks when he sees Evan still planted in the chair he'd turned toward Radek's room that morning.
"No."
Radek shakes his head. His attention turns to his meal, though, and he drags his table out of the corner to sit in front of the glass. He pulls the chair around so that he's facing directly into Evan's room. Evan jumps up to do the same with his furniture. It feels some little bit less lonely to face each other over their food this way.
When they finish, Evan looks down at his hands and tries to think of something to say. He finds nothing that he wants to give voice to. All the words that crowd to the front of his mind spring from the deep-seated fear that he's gone insane from solitude and is imagining all of this. Instead, Radek takes a book from his shelf and asks if he would like to hear a story. Evan nods gratefully, and the rest of the evening passes with the steady flow of Radek's voice.
The next morning arrives for Evan with two pieces of information. The first is that Evan and Radek's tables are still pressed together at the window, the only change to the room Evan has made yet that has stuck. The second is that Evan has a splitting headache because the mysterious noise has returned. He stays curled on his bed with his arms wrapped around his head even when he hears Radek get up and call his name in alarm.
Radek pounds his fist on the glass. "Evan! Major! Are you all right? What is happening?"
Evan fights through the pain enough to sit up and look at Radek. "My head... Can't you hear that?"
"Hear what? There is nothing on this side."
"It's... it's like something far away that's so loud you feel it," Evan says, struggling to find words to explain. "You feel it, but you sort of hear it, too, because it's that loud, and it just, it just hurts."
He has to lie back down after that, and he drags the thin pillow over his head to try to block out some of the unchanging light. He dozes fitfully for a while, and every time he opens his eyes, Radek is watching him with worry. A little while after the second meal arrives, the noise stops, and Evan nearly whimpers with relief.
"You should eat something," Radek says quietly after Evan starts to stir. "It won't do your body any good to starve on top of such stress."
It's the first thing Radek has asked of him, so Evan crawls out of bed and makes himself eat. He gets back into bed when he's done, tired but awake, and Radek reads to him again until they're both ready to sleep.
More days pass, and they begin to form a routine. They wake around the same time and eat breakfast together. They talk over the food, and although Radek takes the burden of carrying the conversation, Evan gradually contributes more and begins to ask questions. He learns that Radek knows very little beyond what Evan knows about their lives before this. Radek remembers their names and that they know each other, and he thinks they met through their work, but he has no idea what the work was.
Some days they keep talking for long stretches, speculating about their lives or making up stories to entertain one another. Evan finds himself being more and more outlandish with his because he wants to see Radek smile more and more. On other days, Radek reads or writes while Evan reads or exercises. There's a slowly growing feeling in the back of his mind that he should keep himself strong in case they ever find a chance to...change things. He doesn't want to think the word 'escape' because he doesn't know what they would be escaping to, or even if there's anywhere to go but here. Still, the other side of the glass is better than nothing.
The noise comes and goes again, and Radek still looks troubled when it puts Evan on edge.
One day, Evan sees that there are nearly twenty new hash marks on Radek's page. They've known each other for almost twenty days. It feels momentous. Evan spends that day trying to figure out some way to mark the twentieth day when it comes, something he can do for Radek as thanks for saving him from himself.
The noise comes that night, though, and it doesn't stop. It lasts through their sleep and all through the next day until Evan is nearly clawing his own skin off. When Radek tries to talk to him, Evan gets up and up-ends his table. He sees the panel on the wall flashing orange instead of its constant green, and he throws the figurines from his shelf across the room, then throws his chair at the wall as Radek shouts at him to stop. When he stops, breathing heavily, head pounding, he sees Radek stumble back from the glass. There's a thick cloud of smoke filling his room. He drops to the floor, reaching weakly up toward Evan.
"Radek! Radek, no!" Evan shouts, pressing his hands against the glass. He throws himself against it a few times, then picks up the chair and puts all his strength into a solid swing. The rebound makes his bones hurt, but the glass is cracked from the impact. He bashes it with the chair again, and again, and then he kicks out a portion of it. He reaches for Radek, and the moment he makes contact, everything goes dark.
Evan wakes up to darkness for the first time in almost two months. The sound has stopped, and he no longer smells smoke. He tries to sit up and finds out painfully that there's a surface inches above him. He reaches up to rub the new sore spot on his forehead.
Memory begins to return. He remembers going off-world for a mission and meeting the Ushka tribe, who had heard of the Lanteans enough to be suspicious. He remembers being allowed into their village only after hours of trying to convince their leader that Atlantis would make a better ally than enemy. He remembers feeling the siren call of Ancient tech in their temple and being compelled into some kind of pod. That's where he is now, in the pod.
God, he hopes someone is out there. Shit, Radek. Evan pounds on the lid of the pod and shouts for help with an aching throat.
After what feels like far too long, he hears voices and metal on metal sounds before the pod cracks open. Fresh air rushes into the cramped space. Evan sucks in deep lungfuls of it as his eyes readjust to real daylight.
"Major Lorne, can you hear me?"
That's Sheppard's voice. Evan sits up and narrowly avoids hitting his head again. "Ra-- Zelenka? Is Zelenka okay?" he asks with more panic in his voice than he likes.
“He’s fine, Major,” Sheppard says, and Evan tunes the rest out. He follows Sheppard's gaze and sees Radek sitting up in another pod. McKay is hovering over him, talking at him a mile a minute.
Evan clambers out of his pod so fast he nearly falls, his legs gone a little unsteady from inactivity.
“Major,” McKay says like he’s about to go off on another rant.
Evan shoulders past him, reaches out to cup Radek’s face in his hands, and kisses him like it’s the end of the world. Radek sighs against his lips when they pull back.
“I thought you didn’t want this,” Radek says quietly.
“I’m an idiot. I was scared, but I’m going crazy without you. When I thought I lost you in there, I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Before Radek can say anything else, McKay makes an awkward throat-clearing squawk. “Well, all right, then, I’d say that we’re good to head back to Atlantis now that I’ve got this ridiculous pile of malfunctioning technology disabled.”
None of the Ushka show their faces as Sheppard herds everyone to the jumper, and Evan can only imagine what Sheppard and McKay might have said to the Ushka over the past few days. Probably enough to scratch this planet off their list of safe places.
Sheppard is unreadable in the jumper, and Evan stares straight ahead for a long minute, just breathing. He knows that Sheppard doesn’t believe in DADT, especially in Atlantis’s unique situation, but he’s still Evan’s CO, and there are some fears you never really shake.
Finally, he makes himself ask, "How long were we in there?"
"Five days,” Sheppard says. “We've been trying to get you and Zelenka out since he sent the rest of your team back to tell us what happened."
McKay turns around in his seat and glares at Radek. “Yes, and next time, please do not climb into the broken mystery equipment to be a hero.”
"Time passes a little differently in there, sir," Evan says to ward off the inevitable shouting match. "Felt like a couple of months for me. I think. I wasn't really keeping track at first." It’s enough, at least, to make McKay switch tracks and expound on time dilation.
Back in the city, Beckett finds nothing wrong with Evan or Radek, saying that the pods kept them in perfectly fine physical condition and that there’s nothing wrong with either of their memories now that they aren’t in a malfunctioning, half-formed VR environment. Once Beckett releases them from the infirmary, Evan reports to Sheppard for the official debrief.
“That was our fault,” Sheppard says when Evan brings up the mystery noise. “The pod went into some kind of faulty user-protection mode whenever anyone else with the gene came near it. Made it pretty damn hard for McKay to shut it down when your vitals were spiking every time he worked on it.”
Evan shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "Sir, about what happened after..."
"Don't know what you're talking about, Major.” Sheppard leans back in his chair and shrugs. “We got you out and came directly back to Atlantis."
"Sir." Evan nods once, grateful.
"Dismissed, Major."
Evan can feel his fingers trembling as he makes his way from Sheppard’s office to Radek’s quarters. Whatever this thing is between them, he wants to work it out. He hasn’t been able to get away from this mess in his head for months, the tangle of Atlantis and his career and how well he and Radek fit together.
As he waits for Radek to answer the door chime, Evan thinks, for the first time, he might be able to have it all.