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Clan of the Cave Geeks, part 7
At last, we have come to the beginning of the end of this first Cave Geeks novella, and in honor of that, we now have some title art:


~At the dawn of science, technology and human history, two men who will invent the future have yet to discover love.~




We got Radek's back story in the last one, and so in this we'll get Rodney's (er... Rodne's).

Be prepared for major woobiness...


Title: Clan of the Cave Geeks 1: The Stargazer and the Toolmaker, Chapter 7, pt 1

Author: Taylor Dancinghands -taylor@willendorphians.com

Characters: Zelenka/McKay

Category: slash, h/c, AU

Warnings: Sloppy Paleolithic history, anachronistic technological leaps and funnied up names.

Rating: NC-17, explicit m/m sex depictions

Archive: Generally yes, but please let me know where

Summary: So what does a bonafide genius do in an era of stone knives and bear skins?

Spoilers/Season: none

Author's notes: You know, I usually don’t even *read* AUs like this, much less write them. Insomnia and jet lag are to blame. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will, not claiming to. Just wanna play with 'em a little. Can't I, can't I, huh?

Beta: Thanks to my faithful beta ankhmutes for her usual useful help and advice.




Clan of the Cave Geeks


Book One: The Stargazer and the Toolmaker –chapter 7, pt 1

"Gods I hate Spring."

This had been Rodne's refrain upon waking the last several rainy mornings, and the days following had featured Rodne at his worst, in R'dek's experience. At first he'd figured that it had to do with the unremitting rain and overcast skies that had held sway for the last several days, but Rodne had endured longer spells of bad weather without descending into such a foul mood. Eventually, R'dek began to worry that it was his presence that had Rodne so irritable. Maybe, he feared, Rodne had finally come to miss his solitude, in spite of what he had said at Midwinters. People can't always tell how they will feel with the passing of time, R'dek knew, and if Rodne was tired of him… then he ought to go, and leave the man in peace.

As the days passed, however, and Rodne's mood stayed dark, it became evident that if it was R'dek's presence that was troubling him, Rodne wasn't going to say anything about it. He probably felt that he'd made R'dek a promise, and wasn't going to go back on it, even if he regretted it now. R'dek did not at all wish to be an unwelcome guest, though, and realized that if the air was to be cleared, he would have to make the first move. R'dek finally nerved himself up to ask the question whose answer he did not really want to hear, after a day where all of Rodne's conversation had come in single syllables. The man looked as miserable as R'dek felt, and he knew it was time to put an end to both their suffering.

"You know," R'dek said as he finished his bowl of stew which had featured the last of their wild rice. "If you have come to regret asking me to stay, I will understand. You did always seem to value your solitude, and maybe you underestimated how much you would miss it. It is not so unexpected, really."

"What!?" Rodne's reaction was not the one of relief that R'dek had expected at all. Rather, there was a look of alarm on Rodne's face as he took in R'dek's words. "No, gods no; that's not it at all…" Rodne set down his food, which he'd only been picking at anyhow, and laid his head in his hands.

"I know I've been an absolute asshole for days, I know," he said, unhappily. "But its nothing to do with you, I swear, R'dek." Rodne looked up then, and his expression was stricken. "Please… oh gods, please don't go. I'll try… I don't know how, but I'll try to do better, I just… Springs are really hard for me, and I never… just… please don't go…"

"No, no, of course not," R'dek said softly, moving to sit at Rodne's side and lay an arm over his shoulder. "Not if you don't want me to. But can you tell me what is troubling you? Why is Spring such a bad time? If I could understand…?"

"Oh gods, there's so many things," Rodne said with a forlorn sigh, laying his head on R'dek's shoulder. "The weather sucks, of course, and I won't be able to make any good observations for a moon or more… Spring is when I always start to run low on good food, and the trail to Lakeside is a mess so we won't be able to get any more for a while… Also… I have some… some really bad memories, too, from other… other Springs… And Spring is when… when… the… the fits… they always come in the Spring."

R'dek let his hands gently stroke Rodne's hair, hoping to calm the man, who he could feel trembling slightly in his arms. It seemed that Rodne had his own evil memories to contend with, though R'dek supposed that he shouldn't be surprised. Perhaps if he could get Rodne to share them with him, he could give the man some relief. And then there was the last thing he had said.

"What… fits? What do you mean?" R'dek asked.

Rodne didn't answer right away, but lay against R'dek's side with his eyes closed for a moment before he spoke. "They happen… two or three times most Springs, sometimes more," he replied at last, with another sigh. "I don't really remember what happens when they come. I just… well, I fall down, and I guess I thrash around a lot… Sometimes I bite my tongue." Rodne's voice held such resignation, it pained R'dek's heart. The man thought so much of his dignity, and clearly even speaking of this meant surrendering it.

"They never last terribly long… and then I… sort of wake up," Rodne continued. "And I feel like crap for two or three days after." He sighed. "I guess it's better that you know, in case it happens when you're around. Could be kind of alarming if you didn't know."

R'dek secretly vowed not to leave Rodne's side for more than a few moments for the duration of the season. He would not allow Rodne to suffer this alone again, if he could help it. "Have you always had these… fits?" he asked aloud. "Do you know why they only happen in the Spring?"

Once again, Rodne remained silent for a spell, then drew himself away from R'dek's side to take up a stick and poke at the fire they sat before, coaxing the flames a little higher. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them so that he sat gazing into the fire close to R'dek but not quite touching him. "I have an idea, yeah," he answered at last.

"If you do not wish to speak of this…" R'dek began, but Rodne shook his head.

"You… you've shared your bad stuff with me," he said. "It's only fair. And maybe…" Rodne shook his head, contesting with a hope he seemed to think futile. "Maybe it will help, a little. I've never… never told anyone about most of it."

"Whatever you wish, Rodne," R'dek said gently, reaching out to touch Rodne's shoulder for a moment. "What ever you would like to share with me, I am happy to listen."

"I should probably start at the beginning then," Rodne said, his voice flat, resigned, yet he hesitated before beginning. "Spring… Spring was when my parents left me." Rodne said at last, then fell silent again after that, prodding at the fire once more, not to any real effect but, R'dek suspected, to have something else to focus on for a moment. He waited in companionable silence for Rodne to continue.

"Our village was flooded," he said eventually. "The creek rose during the night and had carried half the families away before we had any idea. When we gathered the next morning, those of us who were left, I was the only little kid who'd survived. I had six, maybe seven summers by then… I was never sure."

Rodne lifted the stick he'd been using to prod the fire and gazed for a moment at the little coal that glowed on its end. He stared at it until the coal went out, and then set it down on the floor again.

"They all decided to leave," he continued, "because it looked like the creek was going to take the rest of the village before too long, so everyone collected whatever was left, which wasn't much, and headed down the trail. No one had any idea of where we were going, I think. They just knew we couldn't stay there any more."

Even as Rodne tried to keep his voice level and unemotional, R'dek could not fail to hear the loneliness and sorrow hidden in his words. He wanted to hold the man, and the lonely, frightened child lost in his memories, but Rodne had drawn himself away, needing this small amount of isolation to bring his tale to light, and so R'dek left him his space.

"By the second day I knew I was slowing them all down," Rodne said after another small pause. "My parents tried to carry me for a little while, but no one had very much food… They just weren't strong enough, and I was too big to be carried anyway… but I couldn't really keep up either. My mother kept telling the others to wait… but by the third day people were starting to give both my parents… looks. They thought I wouldn't notice… wouldn't know what it meant, but… well, I was always a little smarter than people expected."

R'dek lowered his head into his hands, knowing what came next, but dreading to hear it anyway.

"So, on the fourth morning," Rodne carried on with a little sigh, "I woke up by the fire alone. All they left me was the clothes I was wearing and a single piece of hide, and my mother probably had to fight with them to let me keep it. They couldn't afford to leave me with any food." Now Rodne fell silent again, picking up the fire stick once more to stir it amongst the coals at the fire's edge.

"I don't really blame them," he said, gaze locked on the patterns the stick made. "They did what they had to. Even then I understood. I was a smart kid." Rodne let the stick fall from his fingers, lowering his head to rest on his arms where they wrapped around his knees once again. "It wasn't anyone's fault," he added quietly. "It just happened."

R'dek wanted to cry, Rodne's philosophical resignation more painful to hear even than the tragic events he spoke of. That he had survived was a miracle, but R'dek had a sorrowful feeling that the price of that survival, which he had yet to hear of, would break his heart even more.

"I knew I had to find food," Rodne's words seemed to be coming on their own now, flowing from him without any volition. "So I headed back the way we'd come, because I knew that we'd passed a little settlement the day before. The man there had driven us off, said he had no place for us… but there had been people there, so I knew there had to be some food, and I was already really hungry. It took me most of the day to get there, and when I came to the biggest hut and called out to ask for help the man there told me to piss off. He didn't even come out of his hut to see who I was."

Rodne broke his narrative only briefly for a sigh, then went on. "So I sat down in the mud and started to cry… and I stayed there until the man's wife came in from the fields and saw me. She felt sorry for me… and I must have looked pretty pathetic because I hadn't eaten all day and I'd been sitting in the mud crying for hours… so she gave me some stale bread and then went in and told the man that she wanted to keep me. There was a big fight… and I almost ran away again, but the woman had given me food so I figured there was a chance… And in the end the man said that I could stay, but that I had make myself useful, and I'd have to sleep with the dogs, in a shed out behind the hut." Rodne fell silent again for a moment, though he did not move either, then he drew another breath and continued.

"And that's where I lived for the next eight summers."

"Surely," R'dek said after a moment, needing to fill the silence, "you mean in that village, not…" But Rodne was shaking his head.

"No, no," he said, so unemotionally he might have been speaking about somewhere his cat slept. "I slept in that shed with that asshole's fucking dogs for the next eight years." R'dek found himself struck speechless, and could only wait for Rodne to continue.

"Gods I hate dogs," he said eventually. "I hate the way they smell, the annoying noises they make, their wretched little hierarchies and social rituals…" He trailed off for a moment, then reflected, "Still, those damned dogs probably cared more for me than anyone else in that shit-hole of a village. It was the most miserable place I've ever been."

"Something must have happened to the men there, some time in the past," he said after another short pause, "because when I first came all the other men there, besides the man with the dogs, they were either pretty young or crippled, and they were all afraid of him. His kids were even afraid of him, but that was probably because he beat them whenever he was in a crappy mood, which was every few days or so. They were mighty pleased when I happened along, because that meant that he might end up beating me instead of one of them, and because whenever he was being shitty to them then they could turn around and be as shitty as they wanted to me."

R'dek had passed through settlements like this in his travels, and he never stayed. They were ugly, despairing places and he would much rather sleep under a bush and take his chances with wild animals than subject himself to a night in such a place. The fact that Rodne had endured eight summers in one such explained a lot about him.

"His wife hated him too," Rodne continued. "And they fought all the time, especially when he wanted sex and she didn't, which was almost always. Even the dogs hid from him after one of those fights… and they were always the worst in the Spring." Rodne lifted his head to scrub at his face, scratching his hair and beard, as though chasing some remembered sensation away.

"It was in my fifth Spring there, after one of those fights… and then that day one of his favorite dogs came in from the woods all torn up… He cared more for those fucking dogs than he did for anyone else… and she died later that night." R'dek could tell that even now, the horror and dread of those memories still lived in Rodne's heart, and he seemed to actually be cringing as he related what happened next.

"His kids all knew to hide at times like that… even his wife had someplace else to stay… but I didn't. It was Spring, and it was cold and rainy, and I didn’t have anyplace else to go but the dog shed, and he knew that. He came and found me there, and he… he pretty much beat the living shit out of me."

R'dek felt his hands curl into fists, in helpless rage against a man who was probably years dead already. He bit his lip to stop himself from crying out in sorrow at what Rodne had endured, for Rodne had not yet finished his tale, and R'dek knew he had to finish it, uninterrupted.

"I don't really… remember much about it now, of course," Rodne said, speaking softly, but still carefully neutral. "But I couldn't see quite right, or walk straight for more than a half a moon after that… And I'm pretty sure that's when the fits started."

"Dear gods…" R'dek said softly, in spite of his resolve not to interrupt Rodne's narrative, but his horror could not be contained. Rodne's genius could have so easily been snuffed out, or damaged for life, by this vile creature. Rodne seemed not to notice the interruption, though, or he didn't care. He was lost in his own narrative now, compelled to continue.

"I don't know why I didn't leave, after that," he said. "I mean, yes, I wasn't really myself for moons after that beating, and then it was Winter. Then the next Spring was the first time I had the fits… And by then the man's wife had kind of started looking after me. Not that she cared about me, really, but I worked harder, and was way smarter than any of her own kids, and she was starting to get old, and needed help with a lot of things." Rodne lifted his head to gaze into the fire again. "And I didn't really have anywhere to go."

"How did you finally come to leave, then," R'dek eventually asked, knowing he'd never be able to rest until he knew how Rodne had gotten out of that wretched place.

"Oh, that was because of Leeta," Rodne laughed humorlessly. "Which is pretty funny when you think about it. After all the abuse and everything I'd put up with… it was a girl, who never even treated me that badly, that finally got me to leave." Rodne shook his head in chagrin. "But whenever anyone hit me or kicked me… or called me 'dog boy'… I always told myself that I could leave, anytime… When I realized what Leeta wanted, though… I realized that I would never be able to leave… I'd be stuck there forever… and that scared me so bad, I took off in the middle of the night, and I never looked back."

R'dek waited in silence for several long breaths before he succumbed to temptation, too caught up in the tale not to. "What… what did she want?" he asked at last.

"A baby," Rodne said bluntly. "And to be honest, she might have actually gotten one, but I didn't stay long enough to find out." Rodne picked the fire stick up once more, pushing the logs together to bring the fire up again. "And I suppose that makes me some sort of asshole, too, leaving her like that with a kid of mine to care for alone. She had a… a hare lip, and was the one other person in the village who was treated almost as bad as me, and she told me… on the last night we were… together, that if she had a husband and a baby then the others would have to treat her with a little respect."

Rodne dropped the fire stick and lowered his head again, speaking softly now, his words tinged with shame. "But I didn't want any of that. I was a boy with only fourteen or fifteen summers, and all she told me she wanted at first was sex. How was I supposed to say no to that?"

R'dek found that while he could listen to Rodne speak of loneliness, pain, humiliation and sorrow, he could not bear to hear his shame. He moved finally, to wrap him arms around his lover and pull him close, laying his head on his shoulder and letting the words of comfort he had kept inside all along spill out at last.

"No, no, no… miláčku…" he murmured. "You have done nothing wrong… only what you had to… only what you needed to survive… Do not ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

R'dek felt Rodne's arms tighten around him, felt him tremble with all the emotions his wretched memories had left him with, and found that he wanted to match every blow that Rodne had received with a kiss, counter every rough word with a kind one, and determined to start now.

Holding Rodne in his arms, R'dek told him that he was kind and beautiful and brave and ever so brilliant, and kissed him on his face and throat and over his heart, which R'dek told him was greater than any heart he had ever known. Eventually, actions won out over words and R'dek dragged Rodne back to the bed to love him within an inch of his life, and little by little he could see Rodne's ghosts being driven away, for now.

Curled close to his lover as they fell asleep that night, R'dek reflected that Rodne's evil memories would not be so easily exorcised as his own, as bad as his were. Too much of what Rodne had suffered in his youth had left lasting scars, the fits being among them. Still, he was aware that his presence in Rodne's life was doing more to silence Rodne's old ghosts, and ease his sorrows, than anything he'd ever had in his life before.

R'dek had seen and done many fine things in his life, he knew. He had traveled far, learned much, and partaken of many joys and many sorrows. It said much, then, to own that being a companion to this man might be the finest thing he had ever done, but R'dek was increasingly sure that it was. What was more, he thought, even if he never did anything finer in his life, he knew he would be more than well satisfied. Harboring such thoughts, holding close to this man, R'dek found it easy to succumb to sleep, and so he did.

~*~

Is there more...? sure there is...