So, instead of working on my SeSa fic....

...I wrote this. It's 1,000 words, and part of "Our Conversations Are Like Minefields," a fic I'm writing for/because of blue_raven and her showing me those clips from Cold Squad, though this scene was inspired by a picture rosewildeirish posted, involving pi and a tattoo.

...Course, this fic is horribly depressing. It's set in the SG-1 "Absolute Power" universe, where Daniel Jackson's taken over the world. Yeah. Don't say I didn't warn you.

*

Rodney opens the door to Radek’s room and steps into a white-washed war zone. There is paper everywhere, covering every surface and layering the floor; some pieces crinkle under his feet as his pace falters. He glances around, brow furrowing. “Radek?”

( The rest is behind the cut )

Wow, my brain's being evil today

To Carter at the moment. Seriously, in this "Minefields" story? Everyone is gonna be damaged. This 500-word excerpt contains spoilers for SG-1's "Absolute Power." Also, the implant mentioned is an implant that Jackson puts in the back of people's necks, which cause intense pain.

*

Rodney doesn’t know why Jackson has him visit Samantha Carter, but Jackson insists on it, makes him visit her in her prison cell at least once a week, even though within ten minutes of the very first encounter Rodney knows that nothing is going to be accomplished. She will never tell him anything useful, and he isn’t sure he wants her to, because that means Jackson will have broken her.

But he knows she will never break, just as she never speaks to him. Even after all this time, Rodney cannot name the emotion on her face or the glint in her eyes. Maybe she’s plotting how to get through the bars and snap his neck before a guard can intervene. Maybe she’s not paying any attention to him at all and is lost in her own little world.

Silence has always bothered Rodney -- there is just something so unnatural about it -- and in this prison, with dull, gray walls and stone-faced guards, the silence unnerves him. Of course, there is an easy solution to the problem of silence: to speak.

And so, with Carter’s eyes both focused and unfocused upon him, he talks, leaping from one subject to the next. He talks about going over SG-1 mission reports, about his cat and how Eliot loves tuna but hates turkey, about how he wanted to be a pianist for the longest time, even about what he ate for breakfast that morning. He never talks about Jackson, or the death tally of Moscow, or the fact that Colonel O’Neill is missing and presumed dead after his attempt to stop Jackson.

It’s about three months after his initial visit that Carter’s expression finally changes, contorting into a look of pain that is almost grotesque in its intensity. Rodney watches in horror as she falls to the ground, agonized sounds escaping her lips that sound more animal than human. His alarmed calls to the guard go unanswered, and he can only watch helplessly as she twitches and whimpers on the floor, one of her hands clawing at the back of her neck as though she could rip out the implant.

After what seems like forever, she finally goes still, and only her panting fills the air. Finally, she lifts her face towards him, sweat and tears mingling on her face. A dark little smile curves her lips, and she speaks for the first and only time, voice hoarse from her earlier cries and so bitter that Rodney can taste the sourness in his mouth. “Implants are hell.”