stargateficrec | Folie a Deux by Mad

Show: SGA

Rec Category: Rodney McKay
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Pairings: John/Rodney
Categories: slash, amnesia, prison
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence
Words: 7,662
Author's Journal:

mad_maudlin
Author's Website: Mad_Maudlin on AO3
Link: Folie a deux

Author’s summary: It matters like a hole in the head, because that's what it is: a hole, a wound, a fissure. He can feel out the raw edges where his memories have been cut to pieces, the sudden blanks where the film breaks and he is left flailing on the edge of words.

Why This Must Be Read:
This fic is an exceptional and unique work by Mad_Maudlin. It's written from Rodney's POV, capturing his desperation and stubbornness—Rodney being Rodney. The story revolves solely around him and John, who have been stripped of their memories and locked away. Everything unfolds piece by piece through Rodney’s eyes, keeping them deeply in character—taking care of each other, being protective, refusing to give up, and clinging to one another as a constant, even without knowing why. They simply belong.

It’s an amazing read that, despite the dire situation they’re in, fills you with compassion and love. It showcases their unyielding strength and faith—the belief that as long as they are together, they can overcome anything.

This is a fic that gets even closer and closer to your heart with every reread. It’s truly wonderful.

"We need to get out of here," Ja says one day, as they crouch by the courtyard wall. It's too hot in the sun, but the others are walking there, smiling vacantly and looking at flowers. Rhe and Ja are huddled in the shade because the sunlight makes Rhe's brain want to crawl out of his ears.

"And how do you propose we do that? Hmm?" Rhe peeks out from behind his sleeve, but no, still photosensitive; he can barely make out the watchtower and the armed keepers on its balcony. "Stab security to death with our spoons?"

"They've got a computer," Ja says, and that instantly revolutionizes everything, because computer is one of those words that sets off sparks in Rhe's brain and makes him a little sick and a little giddy at once. "I saw it in the room where...the quiet room."

This is where Ja disappears to every time he does something inadvisably violent. He is usually delivered back to their cell-room-holding tank in a drugged haze, and Rhe sits next to him until either his pupils contract to a normal diameter or he starts swearing. "Are you sure?" Rhe asks.

Ja nods, eyes moving restlessly across the courtyard. "It's a large console, maybe four feet high, with writing down the sides. They're using it for a candleholder."

"Then how do you know it's a computer?"

"How do you know what a foot is?"

Rhe stares at his feet and thinks, not for the first time, that he's completely insane. It's what the others whisper about them, he knows, and since they seem to be the only ones with chronic headaches and secret languages he thinks it might possibly be true. "Even if it is a computer," he says, "what do we do with it?"

"You're a smart guy, Rhe," Ja says confidently. "I bet you can figure it out."