A/N: Okay, so this one isn't the next story I promised to post, but the idea came to me and I couldn't put it to rest until I wrote it. It's a short one for me, just three chapters long, and inspired by my hitting a certain birthday today, which might involve a '4' and have a '0' in there somewhere too. If I'm turning 40, I'm taking someone else down with me. Since I did the honours for Sheppard last year it's Rodney's turn this year, and because they're in the Pegasus Galaxy, it's far from a normal birthday. Set in Season 5.

This is kind of a companion piece for 'Another Pegasus Birthday', but stands alone in its own right. Team whump ensues, but as with all my stories, Sheppard is the focus. Unbeta'd due to writing this in a rush ready to post my big day. Enjoy - warts 'n all! :)

Disclaimer: As I'm sure you're all aware, Stargate Atlantis does not belong to me, because if it did it would still be on our screens! Rant over...

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Assumptions and Expectations

Chapter 1

'I'm not asking her for help. She's just a kid,' McKay pouted, arms tightly folded over his chest and his chin jutted at an angle that suggested his mind could not be changed.

'A very smart kid,' Sheppard pointed out, grasping the bars that connected their two cells. For the first time he was glad the barrier was between them, because right now he could willingly strangle his friend for not listening to him when their situation was so dire.

'I don't work with kids...I don't even like them!'

Though furious, Sheppard put himself in Rodney's shoes and tried to understand the man's near phobia of children. He knew how McKay felt about kids, knew it better than he cared to admit right now, but this youngster was different and the scientist actually felt threatened by her intelligence. If there was ever a kid McKay could relate to, she was the one, but he just wouldn't contemplate asking her for assistance because it would mean admitting she was smarter than him. 'I understand that, Rodney. I really do, but we're running out of time here. Can't you make an exception?' he begged, choosing not to call McKay on the truth of his refusal.

From behind him a guttural growl rolled out, the emptiness of their barred cells only emphasising the threatening sound. Sheppard froze and Rodney's jittering and complaining instantly stopped, his eyes widening at the sound. 'I'll figure something out...I promise.'

Sheppard knew he shouldn't doubt McKay since he'd rarely failed to pull off a miracle when it was needed, but those few failures – those incidents that ended in total calamity because of Rodney's complete inability to accept he was wrong – left him scared to put this situation entirely in the scientist's hands.

'Maebus is the only one we've met so far on this God-forsaken ship who's shown even the slightest hint of compassion for us. We need her on our side, Rodney,' he reiterated, leaving his gaze burning into McKay's far longer than he would normally be comfortable with to get his point across.

'But she's a kid!'

Sheppard dropped his head against the bars and sighed. This conversation had been going around in circles for who-knew-how-long now, and it wasn't showing any signs of taking a useful detour. For a second, his brain fazed out, scrolling through calculations and estimations of how best to launch an escape bid, but the equations and risk evaluations were gone before he could mentally grasp them. He sighed, half wanting the changes he felt happening to take hold, and half dreading them. They'd been held like this for three weeks now, and he saw no signs of the Pendorans tiring of their work. They had to find a way out of this.

They'd foolishly thought they'd struck gold after stumbling across the advanced civilisation travelling at the outskirts of the Pegasus Galaxy. The Pendorans, a race of long-limbed, long-haired albinos, were in possession of technologies that had exceeded all of their expectations. Rodney in particular had almost burst with excitement when they'd turned out to be a friendly society apparently willing to share their knowledge, not least because their ship was capable of reaching sub-light speeds far greater than anything the Daedalus could obtain. Sheppard had been kicking himself ever since for not realising it was all too good to be true. Things like that just didn't happen in the Pegasus Galaxy...not without a massive price to pay.

'Rodney...please...'

Before he could finish his appeal the lighting dulled and the outer door to their cell room pulled back into one of the all-encompassing, oppressive black walls as a group of figures moved in from the poorly lit corridor outside. This had become a regular scene over their past three weeks of incarceration in that bleak room, one that Sheppard had now come to associate with procedures and pain. He stood his ground and waited to see what would happen this time. Sometimes these 'people' simply came to observe the results of their work, and he silently prayed this was one of those times.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. The group approached Rodney's cage and unlocked it, two of them stepping inside and grasping his upper arms to drag him out into the open.

'Oh, no...not again!'

'Stay strong, Rodney,' Sheppard called after him. He didn't ask the Pendorans to take him instead because he knew it was futile. For the first few days he'd shouted himself hoarse trying to protect McKay and Teyla and draw the Pendorans' attentions onto him, not to mention demanding to know Ronon's whereabouts, but it had all fallen on deaf ears. They simply didn't consider him important enough to listen to.

Another growl from the shadowy end of his cage made him slide his way into the furthest corner from it. Keeping his distance was the best tactic now, something he'd learned the hard way. The deep scratches down the left side of his face and neck stung at the memory of his last attempt to appeal to some deeply rooted sense of loyalty in the creature. It was hard to accept there was nothing left to reason with, but the truth was gouged into his skin. His cage-mate was little more than an animal now.

The sound of the bars creaking sent shivers down his spine. The monster was tethered to them to keep it restrained, but it grew stronger with each passing hour and some time, maybe some time soon, either the tethers or the bars were going to give up.

Drawing his legs up to his chest, he wrapped his arms around them and laid his head on his knees. All his instincts told him he should stay awake, keep watch against the imminent attack, but it had been so many days since he'd had anything near proper sleep he had no choice any more. He was changing too, more than he was happy to admit even to himself, and the physical and mental effects made finding peace almost impossible. His senses were now bombarded with so much information his brain was frying just trying to figure it all out. Being awake was exhausting. He had to rest while the lights were low and less intrusive.

As he drifted, his mind replayed the details of the meeting with their captors, the seemingly beneficent aliens who had so warmly welcomed them on board their ship before imprisoning them. The Pendorans had possessed and air of serenity despite their size. He supposed that was why they'd been so easily lulled into trusting them. These were clearly a peaceful race, happy in their pursuit of knowledge and untainted by the desire for greater wealth and status. They had seemed ideal allies...until the time had come for them to leave the ship and return to Atlantis.

Ronon had been the first to fall in the attack, the Pendorans obviously recognising the physical threat he posed and shooting him several times with darts of sedatives that crumpled his legs beneath him in seconds, despite his best attempts to stay upright and reach for his weapon. After that, the rest of them had been easily overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of their captors, tranquilised before any of them could react in defence of themselves.

When they'd woken some time later there had been no sign of Ronon. The Pendorans had given no explanation of his whereabouts, only saying that he was gone because he was of no interest to them, and that the three of them still remaining would further their understanding of the human species and its 'wondrous variety'. He hadn't understood what they'd meant then, but he knew only too well now.

A hiss from the shadows made him start and wake, the creaking of the bars setting his teeth on edge. 'Come on, Teyla. Gimme a break, would ya?'

Teyla hissed again, pulling forward against her bonds until her face came into the light. The once beautiful Athosian now sported a waxen complexion, and a set of razor-sharp spiked teeth any piranha would have been proud of. She was barely recognisable as his teammate.

'I care nothing for your condition,' she growled, her bi-tonal voice sending a shudder through him. 'I have hunger I need to satisfy.'

'Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not planning to help you out with that.' He could feel her utter contempt for him filling his mind, making his head ache from trying to shut it out. It had been this way for a few days now. At first he'd thought he was going crazy, hearing the thoughts of McKay and Teyla even when they weren't speaking, but then he'd started hearing the voices of the Pendorans who were examining him too, anyone who came close to him in fact.

'These bonds will not hold me much longer, and then I will take great pleasure in feasting on your defiance.'

He wished he had a dollar for every time he'd heard a Wraith say that to him. Apparently his defiance was considered the dish of the day in Wraith circles. 'Yeah, well...good luck with that,' he grunted, the threat sounding just as hollow as it felt as the words left his lips. He knew if she broke free and chose to feed there wasn't much he could do about it other than fight her with his bare hands. Her ever increasing strength and Wraith agility, of course, meant the match was more uneven than ever, and he rarely won a sparring match against her under even normal circumstances.

The bars creaked again, his sensitive eardrums protesting against the noise by frantically vibrating and causing him to cover his ears. Not that doing so stopped him from hearing the snap that heralded Teyla's first break-though.

'Aw crap!'

With one bond broken, the rest seemed to just give up the fight, and in seconds she was on him, slamming his head into the bars behind him and leaving him stunned as she tore at his shirt and rammed her hand against his breast bone. Although her fingertips dug into his flesh, and her feeding sucker latched on, nothing else happened. The rush of relief that gave him was almost as much of a high as the Wraith enzyme that had flooded his system when Todd had fed on him in Kolya's warehouse. She couldn't feed. She wasn't ready yet.

Teyla screamed a cry of sheer frustration, pulling back her useless hand and staring at it as if it had committed some heinous violation of her rights. It seemed she would go hungry again today. Her transformation wasn't quite complete, although he could see it wouldn't be long before it was. Teyla dropped the ineffectual feeding hand down onto the floor beside his head and lowered her face down to his, sniffing his scent as if savouring the aroma of a finely cooked meal. 'You win today, Sheppard. But very soon your life-force will be mine for the taking and I will revel in the taste of your defeat, Lantean.'

He held very still, not even flinching as a string of saliva dripped from her savage maw down onto his cheek. Her actions were driven by an ancient rivalry long since died out, but here their captors had awakened it once again. None of this was her fault. He had no wish to aggravate or hurt her if it could be avoided.

The Pendorans had apparently been doing far more than entertaining Sheppard and his team while inviting them to enjoy their hospitality. Somehow, they had all been scanned, assessed and evaluated during their time in their company, and his DNA and that of Teyla had been too tantalising an experiment to resist. So they had taken them prisoner and proceeded to put them through a series of experiments designed to agitate the more dormant aspect of their special genetics and cause it too mutate and take over. As the days had slipped by, Teyla had first gradually lost her normal composure then her physique had begun to change, her body and limbs elongating with painful spasms that had had her writhing on the floor with nothing he could do to help her. He'd never felt so useless or guilty. Teyla was a mother now with a young son waiting for her return, and she was becoming a monster before his eyes. He should have taken better care of her.

The experiments carried out on him had been far less stressful on his body. But he could feel the changes even if he couldn't see them, even here, pinned to the floor beneath his snarling, drooling companion. His mind was filled with her hatred of him and what he was becoming, her desire to feed and her desperation to break free and leave this torturous prison to the point it felt as if his brain would explode. Then, as she drew her hand back to slash him again with her talon-like finger nails, he mentally cried out, No!

Teyla's arm halted and refused to move, frozen in mid-swing.

He saw the suddenly confusion overtake Teyla's hatred of him, saw her battle to bring that hand forward, but she couldn't. He was controlling her actions. It seemed he'd changed far more than even he had realised.

The doors drew back again and several sets of footsteps hurried in. He sensed the Pendorans' surprise that she'd broken free of her bonds, but they quickly recovered and the familiar sound of tranquiliser guns rang out. Teyla arched back off him, screaming in protest as a number of darts hit her in the back, but even her Wraith strength wasn't enough against their sedatives. Seconds later she slumped forward onto him, a dead-weight.

For a brief moment Sheppard worried the Pendorans had noticed Teyla's inability to move, but they made no comment, and it seemed he had once again kept his burgeoning abilities hidden. They'd taken his weapons and his freedom, the only way he could arm himself was to use what they were awakening within him against them, and to do that he had to keep it from them until the time was right.

The Pendorans entered the cage and dragged her off him, and as he pushed up he saw them restraining her again, this time with chains rather than the earlier leather-like straps.

Then, en masse, they turned toward Sheppard. 'Bring him to the laboratory to begin the next stage of his treatment,' one ordered, as the others advanced on him.

The dart that hit him in the thigh ended any thoughts he had of complaining.

oooOOOooo

Rodney carried out the tests set for him to the best of his ability, all the time conscious that his every movement and decision was being monitored. The Pendorans were keen to study his methods of calculation and had spent more hours than he cared to...well, calculate...testing his metal agility.

At first he hadn't minded. The computer screens had brought welcome illumination to the otherwise dark and foreboding lab, and the tests had been easy, relatively speaking. Not that Teyla or Colonel 'Coulda been Mensa' would have got anywhere with them, but for him it had been a cakewalk. Then the tests had grown progressively more complex, pushing his knowledge of topics such as quantum mechanics and thermodynamics to its very limits...and to add insult to injury he was punished with electric shocks whenever he made a mistake, as if the embarrassment of making errors wasn't bad enough. His hands and arms now constantly tingled with pain, even when he wasn't being tested, and all the time that kid sat watching him, doing nothing to ease his discomfort. But at least it was just the computer tests this time. Sometimes they made him lie inside a dark and claustrophobic metal chamber for hours on end while it felt like they sucked out his brains. That process always left him exhausted and nauseous for at least the next day. In comparison, this was far more bearable.

The current test question had been on the screen for a few minutes now, and Rodney had learned the painful truth that running on ego wasn't the wisest move. Since that was his natural default setting it had been difficult to rein it in, but now he second-guessed himself on everything, his self-confidence all but destroyed.

Just when he thought he had this latest problem sorted in his mind, his hand spasmed and he hit the wrong key, getting an instant shock for his troubles. McKay hissed, grasping his throbbing hand under his left arm and doing his utmost not to curse. The Pendorans didn't like cursing. They thought it was uncivilised and a sign of an 'underdeveloped vocabulary symptomatic of less advanced civilisations', their words, not his. So now he didn't curse, because he was determined not to be considered inferior. Except they thought he was inferior anyway – why else would they be treating him like a trained chimp?

The kid, Mavis or whatever the hell she'd said her name was, winced at his obvious pain. 'Take your time, Dr McKay, and when you're ready, please try again.'

She wasn't actually a kid per se, more a teenager, but in McKay's book, anyone under twenty years of age was strictly outside of his comfort zone. He just didn't know how to relate to them. But at least she used his name...it was more than the others ever did.

'You know, I respond just as well to food incentives!' he squeaked, shaking out his painfully numb digits.

The young girl looked mortified, then instantly instructed one of her companions to bring their subject some food. He could have done without being referred to as a subject, but the thought of food took the edge off his annoyance.

He was soon presented with a plate of sustenance that was about as appealing as elephant dung to look at, but thankfully smelled and tasted far better. The Pendorans had analysed their digestive systems on their initial incarceration and had calculated that this mush was the most nutritious form of meal the humans could eat. This had been their only food for the past three weeks and even though he'd found the texture of it almost unpalatable for the first couple of days, in time he'd grown used to it. When it was a choice between eating gloop and hypoglycaemia, it was an easy adjustment to make.

Unappetising as the colour and consistency were, Rodney wolfed the meal down as if he hadn't been fed in days, feeling no shame in the way it trickled down his chin and dripped back into the bowl in his haste to feel full and calm again. This situation was playing havoc with his already highly-strung nerves. Eating was the only 'normal' thing he did now, and while he focused on keeping the slimy mess down he wasn't thinking about how hard it would be for Atlantis to ever locate them on a ship as fast as this.

All the time the girl, the strangely elongated albino child of this brilliant, if apparently inbred, race of humanoids, watched him as if he was some fascinating sample she'd cultivated in a Petri dish.

'You seem angry, Dr McKay. Why is that?' she asked as he finished up his meal.

Rodney almost balked on his last mouthful of goo, not sure he was brave enough to say how he felt. But weeks of captivity and low-grade torture had loosened his tongue and made him forget his normal inhibitions when facing the enemy. He was no Sheppard, he couldn't charm his way out of a tricky situation like his friend could, but he could definitely hurl insults as well as the next man...probably better. And since it was growing ever likely that he was going to spend his impending fortieth birthday being bested by a super smart kid, he was feeling mean enough to do it.

'Yeah, I'm angry. You people...you...you claim to be an advanced, no a 'superior' race, that's what you called yourselves, but you're treating us like lab rats. If you're so superior why can't you see how wrong that is?'

The girl dropped her burning cerise gaze away, seemingly ashamed by his accusation. Another of her kind stepped forward now, sending the child on her way. She cast one furtive and apologetic look in his direction before elegantly rising and stepping out of the room.

'You think we are barbaric?' this new figure asked, his seven feet frame towering over him. All of the Pendorans looked similar — unbelievably tall with white hair and impossibly pale skin punctuated by fiercely bright pink eyes. Their slender frames gave no hint to their gender, only the pitch of this one's voice denoted him as male at some imperceptible level.

'Yes...actually.' McKay raised his chin with pride, feeling a slight tremble in his bottom lip. It wasn't quite the look he'd been going for, but it would have to do. Sheppard never shook with fear in front of these people. Why couldn't he be more like Sheppard? As the Pendoran continued to glare at him, his resolve shattered into a million pieces. 'Please don't hurt me any more than you already have for saying that.'

'Pain is used as a motivator. We would not use mindless violence...we are above such things,' the male assured him, though his expression remained severe and just the wrong side of threatening.

'If you want information on the Ancients or the Wraith we have plenty of it...a whole database full of it. And we'd be willing to share in trade for an insight into some of your technologies...no need for all the tests and mind probing.'

The alien tilted his head and eyed him curiously, the faintest flicker of a smile touching on its thin, lipless mouth. 'A trade? But why would we do that when we can take what we want?'

'Because it's fair,' he complained, ignoring the slightly childish words, And this isn't fair! that formed now in his brain.

'I am unconvinced that sharing our knowledge with you would be in any way beneficial to us. The process of learning is just as fascinating as the final result after all, would you not agree?'

'Well, normally yes, but not when you're harming intelligent beings to do it.'

Though this male's face showed little expression, his features shifted a little into something resembling mild annoyance. 'So you are suggesting that your kind has never harmed an inferior life form in the pursuit of progress?'

It was clear from the way he said it, and the way his gazed burned into him that this being knew the truth of the history of scientific advances on Earth. Maybe in their travels the Pendorans had been there and harvested information from some poor, unsuspecting souls who had previously not even known of the existence of alien races. But, sure, they'd used animals and sometimes even people to further their scientific understanding, but using people without their consent was something that would never happen now in any sanctioned experiment. 'Yes, but we've realised that kind of thing is wrong and we've moved on from that. Surely you people have learned that too? We're equals...treating us this way is wrong.'

The male straightened up, giving him a few more inches of height that he really didn't need, then said, 'We have been travelling this universe for millennia. We have possessed advanced intelligence since long before even single-celled life forms first sprang into existence on your home world. To claim we are equals is an insult. You are but a newborn in this universe...still learning...still finding your way.'

'And this is the example you set to us?' McKay snapped, feeling insulted himself now. 'No offence, but you're not likely to win any good parenting awards any time soon!'

Now it was his companion's turn to proudly raise his chin. He glared down at McKay, and the scientist shrank back into his oversized chair. 'Your session has ended, human. You will be returned to your cell.'

McKay's jaw dropped, and he watched the door behind the male open and allow in two other figures, who gathered him up from the seat and swept him out of the room, his feet barely touching the floor. These adults were immovable...there was just no sense of humility to appeal to. Maybe Sheppard was right about talking to the kid...