Fic- Orpheus Rising (1/2)
Title: “Orpheus Rising”
Rating: PG-13
Warning: None
Genre: H/C, angst, friendship.
Word Count: 12k-
Summary: Rodney and the team work to bring John home, then fight to bring him out of the darkness. Set post S5.
Written for : linziday for the sheppard_hc Secret Santa exchange. Prompt at the end.
Thanks to kristen999 for the beta.
---
Whether we ever wanted to admit or not, I think we all thought we were a little… not better… maybe cooler? than the SG1ers. Yeah, maybe they were first, going through the gate, fighting aliens, bringing some of them home… but they never got to leave their own galaxy. All their fighting and friending was done in our veritable backyard. Now Pegasus? That was like Marco Polo in China. James Cook, sailing to the farthest corners of the globe. And we went there. Lived there, for five years.
So being back in the Milky Way seemed a bit of a back step. When you’ve taken on Wraith in superhives, and won, and destroyed a whole planet of Replicators… you get to thinking that anything you’d find in your backyard would be rather tame.
Being forced to spend all this time back on Earth, with her bureaucracy and politics and Starbucks and Mickie D’s on every corner… well, it wasn’t all that surprising that Sheppard would find it all more than a little boring. Confining. Stultifying, I think, sums it up best.
Ronon had been the first of us to head out. I think he lasted a whole week before Landry had tired of seeing damage reports for the walls in the facility and the injury reports from the gym. Conan’s normally glowery face actually brightened for a split second when the General threw him onto an SG team and sent him out to burn off some of his frustration.
Teyla went out next. She was sent out on missions with planets we’d already made contact with, to use her diplomatic skills and weave a little of her special Teyla magic with some of our grumpier neighbors. But she’d gone with her gun strapped on and there was little doubt she sometimes itched to use it. She may have been born a farmer’s daughter but she’d grown into our own little Xena, warrior princess.
Me? I never went out. No need. I had my lab and all the minions and coffee they could bring me. It was quiet, just the way I liked it. No daily threats of impending doom. The most danger I faced was my morning commute through Colorado Springs, dodging all those crazy bicyclers giving me dirty looks, even though I drive a Prius.
It actually took Sheppard six months before he finally succumbed to the daily grind. He’d spent so much time, tilting at windmills, fighting to get Atlantis moved back to Pegasus. It’d been one meeting too many. He stormed out during a lunch break in what felt like the hundredth session with the IOA and never come back. I’d been in that meeting, had seen the stony faces that stared back at him as he’d listed, again, the myriad reasons why we needed to go back. I can’t say I blamed him; Sisyphus had a cake job compared to the uphill battle John Sheppard fought.
So he’d talked to Landry. The old man had probably been just as happy to toss him out with Ronon. Sheppard’s face had been just about as glowery and his constant running through the halls at all hours had raised a few complaints. Okay, maybe some of them were mine, but it got really annoying.
The three of them made their own little SG team. SG-13. Go figure. They’d mucked about the Milky Way, starting with some of the planets the gate teams had already explored, just to get their feet wet. They regaled me with stories of their little adventures over the occasional dinner in the mess; they told the tales big but there wasn’t the same spark. I told myself that I was the smart one, staying behind. I could read about many of the same things they saw in any of the hundreds of records on file, not that I would ever have the time or really want to. I’d brought some toys out of Atlantis before they mothballed the old gal and Carter and Lee had some Goa’uld and Asgard tech that kept me busy. Visions of what could be done if I could fuse all three together kept me company while I worked and sometimes even chased the Wraith and whales out of my dreams at night. And of course, there was that new something I was trying to develop with Jennifer, awkward as it sometimes was.
We all settled in to what passed for normalcy for us. Life was… well, if it wasn’t good, it was enough.
And then, as it always seems to do, life took an abrupt turn into the shitter, colloquially speaking. So much for the safety of our own backyard.
SG-13 was checking out MJ2-YD3, a planet at a developmental stage somewhere between steam engines and nuclear fission. Several hours after missing their last radio check-in Teyla and Ronon staggered through the gate with a single Marine and two freaked out geeks, all of them bleeding from one wound or another. Sheppard, another Marine and a geologist had been taken captive.
A coup or something, I never really did get all the details straight. SG13, along with a minister or prefect or whatever they called them on that backwater planet, had been taken hostage by the Rebel Alliance or whatever the hell they called themselves. Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon did what they do best; shoot guns and sacrifice themselves for others. Half the team managed to escape, barely. By the time they’d managed to wrestle some stitches and bandages onto Teyla and Ronon and they’d headed back out, the rebels were gone along with the captives.
We went back to the planet, scanned and scanned, then we scanned some more. The whole reason the stupid geologist was there in the first place was to investigate some stupid ore that covered the stupid planet. And it looked like that stupid ore was affecting transmissions.
Search parties scoured the planet but their technology turned out to be a bit more advanced than steam engines. They’d disappeared down the proverbial rabbit hole and all our hunting parties came up empty.
We never really gave up hope. I mean, this was Sheppard we’re talking about. I’d thought too many goodbyes to the man, only to have him pop up on the radio with a smug one-liner. But then days turned into weeks. When the weeks turned into a month, none of us noted the anniversary out loud…
Of course, with Sheppard, it had to be all about the timing.
-------
As I was suiting up for the day’s search efforts I got a call from Landry. Not a particularly rare thing but with all of us on edge… okay, me, on edge, I couldn’t help but feel that oh, so familiar twinge of foreboding.
I tried to maintain a little civility, talking to the man, because he was Sheppard’s commanding officer and he wasn’t always a complete asshole. “Kinda busy here, General. Can it wait?” Hey, I asked.
“No, Dr. McKay, I don’t think it can,” came Landry’s reply. I tensed at how somber and serious his voice was.
“Did you - was there- did you hear something?”
“Just get your ass in my office, doctor.” And he hung up. So much for his attempt at civility with me.
By the time I got there Ronon, Teyla and Lorne were already there, ready to go in their off world gear.
Landry had called us all in to his office, told us the SGC was preparing to have Sheppard, Bennett and Potter listed as officially Missing, Presumed Dead. Paperwork and all that. Relatives to be contacted, affairs to be put in order. Bureaucracy at its finest.
We stood staring at the three sets of documents ready to be filed in triplicate.
“This doesn’t mean we stop looking,” Landry said.
“Damn straight, it doesn’t,” Ronon growled, his massive arms crossed so tightly I wondered how he could breathe.
I caught Lorne glancing away, his eyes downcast. “What?”
He looked up at me and shook his head. Did that meaningful look back and forth with Landry that drove me nuts. “What?” I demanded again. “The looks - what?”
Lorne blew out a long breath. “It means we can keep looking but our resources will be seriously curtailed.”
“Curtailed? Is that military speak? What resources?”
“Manpower, for one,” Lorne replied. “Personnel will be redirected.”
“God, I hate how you people talk. Who will be left to keep up the search?”
Lorne gave another one of those looks at his boss then at the two others in the room. “SGC has no control over Teyla and Ronon.”
Teyla’s head bowed as she fumed. “Ronon and I are not enough. Cannot this paperwork be held off, General?”
Landry shook his head. “Afraid not, Teyla. Look, whether we like it or not, the SGC program can’t grind to a halt over these three men. We’ve scoured that planet from pole to pole; we can’t waste-“
“Waste?” I managed to choke out.
“We can’t expend any more man hours or resources. We’re maintaining diplomatic contact with the planet’s leaders and I’ve been assured they are continuing their efforts. They lost a man, too, remember.”
“Are you kidding me?” I spluttered. “You want to leave their lives in the hands of strangers? And barely advanced ones at that? No. No way.”
“Look, I understand your frustration, Dr McKay-“
“No! No, you don’t. I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. Sheppard would never leave anyone behind like this.”
Lorne looked at me with the most devastated expression. I wheeled on him. “You! Your whole team was presumed dead! We had bodies in our morgue, but we never stopped looking.”
Sheppard’s sidekick looked like a kicked puppy, and it didn’t even make me feel better.
“I remember, Dr. McKay,” he said softly. He dashed another resentful glance at Landry then stiffened. “I have my orders.”
“Disobey them. Sheppard would.”
The room got really quiet. Ronon was boring holes through Landry’s head and I almost expected his blaster to come out, fully charged.
The general was stone-faced; I knew that expression, had worn it myself on more than one occasion. He wasn’t budging.
“Fine,” I muttered. “I’m going back to trying to recalibrate the scanners. I’m working on a program to compensate for the interference.”
“You have more pressing work, Dr. McKay,” Landry said, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t,” I shot back. I saw Landry’s mouth open and I knew what was coming. “I quit.”
“Dr. McKay-“
I could feel the heat in my face and that damned neck spasm I get when I’m all worked up. “I quit. SGC has no more say in what M Rodney McKay PhD PhD does anymore.”
“Rodney-“
“No, Teyla. I won’t work for an organization that-“ My speech was cut off by the sound of Landry’s phone ringing. The general picked up the receiver, listened briefly, then dropped it back onto the cradle with a stunned expression.
“What now?” I groaned.
The general’s bushy eyebrows rose as he pinned me with a steely gaze. “That was Walter. The team on the planet picked up Colonel Sheppard’s sub-q transmitter a few moments ago.”
The group of us all started talking at once and Landry raised a hand. “Before Walter could even alert anyone, MJ2-YD3 contacted us directly. They have Sheppard… they’re sending him home.”
Have as in …. I didn’t want to ask. I swallowed hard. “Is he…?”
Landry gave me a grim smile. “He’s alive.”
-----
Alive was a bit of an overstatement. What came through the gate was barely recognizable as a human being.
Two goons in silly burgundy robes - seriously? None of these planets ever developed tee shirts and jeans?- followed behind a nebbishy man in an even sillier gold robe. They held between them a stretcher. They said it was Sheppard under the blanket. All I could see was some skin the pale white of a cave dweller, bruises, bandages and hair. The hair was what finally made me realize it really was him. Longer, matted and melding into a mountain man beard, it was still identifiable as Sheppard’s porcupine with hair gel do.
A medical team swarmed in from behind us after our goons gave the all clear, picked up the litter and whisked it away before we could even see if he was awake.
Gold Robe held something in his hands. After sizing us up he glanced between Ronon and Landry, trying to figure out which was the leader. The general finally cleared his throat and Gold Robe flashed a sickly smile, gave him a kind of head bob and solemnly handed the package over. Landry grimaced and held it away from him, wrinkling his nose like he’d been handed a dirty diaper. Then his face fell. I swear, the old grump’s stone face actually crumpled a little. He lifted a piece of fabric; it made a hollow clinking sound. It was a tattered, dirty piece of black cloth; as it fell open we could see it was all that was left of Sheppard’s tee shirt. His dog tags were tangled up with it.
“I can only offer the sincerest of apologies for the manner in which your man was treated,” Gold Robe said, with another head bob.
“Man?” Landry barked. “We had men on that planet. Where are the other two?”
After another quaking head bob - looked like the little man was plagued with my neck spasm- Gold Robe stammered out, “The exchange was meant for all of your people, and ours. But we were too late. The other of your people did not survive. They were consigned to the lye pits. Your Colonel Sheppard will verify that for you… should he survive. But he did ask us to bring these icons to you.” From a pocket he pulled out another set of dog tags and an SGC jacket patch from the geologist, Dr Bennett.
Lorne reached out and took them. Just stared at them in his hands before shoving them into his own pocket. “Where are these lye pits?”
Gold Robe’s eyes widened. “Why would you want to go there?”
Lorne looked at me, shame in his eyes. “Because we don’t leave people behind.”
----
So Sheppard was back, on the very day he was to be declared dead. See what I mean about the man’s timing? By the time we got read the butcher’s bill of Sheppard’s condition I think some were readying to get the paperwork back out.
He’d been shot during the initial gunfight. The barbarians on the planet had darned him up like an old sock and the wound in his shoulder, even after all this time, still wasn’t healed and needed to be fixed. Broken fingers and toes, a hairline fracture in his ankle, broken ribs and internal injuries that had required surgery of their own. He’d almost lost a kidney and there was no guarantee yet he’d keep it.
And during his stay at their version of the Hanoi Hilton, food beyond bread and water was apparently not on the menu. Sheppard already had the body fat of an Olsen twin and a month on his impromptu crash diet did him no favors.
On top of all that, a respiratory infection. Of course. Because the man never does anything halfway.
He was back four days before he regained consciousness. I was the lucky one to be there when it happened.
When his eyes first fluttered open it barely even registered. They’d done that bunches of times while he’d been out, but they always shut back down, not to open again for hours. After they stayed open for more than a brief second I put my laptop down. My hand hovered over the radio at my ear. The staff had already yelled me at repeatedly for my false alarm calls.
Then they really opened. Like wide. Freaked out.
“Hey, Sheppard. It’s me, your old pal Rodney.”
He didn’t respond to me. Vocally. But his eyes spoke volumes. They spun madly as he tried to take in every inch of the white-walled cubicle.
One hand, three fingers in padded aluminum braces, started clawing at the sheet covering him. I grabbed his hand, instinctively, even though he was a petri dish of various infections. It was hot. Hotter than human flesh should ever be.
Those pinwheeling orbs immediately shot up and he stared at me. Through me, at first.
“C’mon, John,” I tried again. “Relax, it’s just me.” I scratched at my stubble-covered face. “I know I haven’t cleaned up in a while but I can’t be that scary.”
Then his too-hot hand wrapped around mine, hard. Harder than it had a right to in his condition; the metal dug into my palm. His eyes, glazed with fever, bore into mine. Then his lips moved but only a raspy whispering came out.
I leaned closer, my breath held for his sake and mine. I could feel the heat radiating off of him.
“Don’t give up.”
His hand squeezed even tighter, broken fingers and all, as I shook my head, not understanding. “John, I-“
“They’re… coming. For us.”
Before I could say another word the cavalry finally arrived. Lam and her minions coursed into the tiny cubicle and I was swept aside by the crowd of white coats and scrubs.
By the time they left and I was allowed in he’d fallen back asleep and I was left with gnawing guilt at the realization that while we got him back, we never came for them.
----
The fever finally broke late the next day and Lam started using when’s, not if’s when talking about Sheppard’s recovery.
She may have been more optimistic about his condition, but to me, it looked like he was even worse than when we’d brought him home.
He was thin and shaky, covered in a sheen of sweat. He coughed almost non-stop, only pausing to dry heave bile and his enteric feeding into a kidney dish, and what wasn’t coming out one end was coming out the other. Jennifer explained that it was all to be expected, between the infections, the antibiotics and reintroduction to food but to me, he looked like misery personified. He could barely speak, but his expression, when he was actually awake and looking at you, just said, “Shoot me. Please.”
Teyla and Ronon, were, of course, maddeningly calm about the whole situation. I couldn’t stand to spend more than a few minutes at a time with him but they sat at his bedside, like good friends are supposed to. Even though he barely spoke to them, they stayed, through his lungs and stomach being turned inside out, through the bedding changes and through smells and sounds I just couldn’t tolerate.
I had just started to enter the cubicle, my fifth attempt of the day, when I heard that gut-twisting retching. I can’t even handle simulated vomiting on TV - I threw up during the blueberry pie contest scene in Stand By Me and never did see how the movie ended- and this was live- with sound effects and full smell-o-vision.
My stomach threatened a rebellion of its own, my coffee and bearclaw beginning their own uprising. I wheeled about and headed back out, running-literally- into Jennifer.
“Rodney! What’s wrong? Is it the colonel?”
I shook my head, swallowing hard, not even able to answer her.
“You’re white as a ghost. Come sit down.”
She led me over to a stool, eased me down and, of course, started taking my pulse. Sheppard was in agony, and I was getting fussed over. I snatched my hand away and wiped the cold sweat from my upper lip. “I’m fine. I just can’t - it’s… God, I’m a shitty friend.”
A smile twitched at her lips. “You’ve always had a weak stomach, Rodney. It’s completely natural to experience a physiological response to that kind of stimuli.”
“Completely natural for me, you mean.”
“Some people are just… better suited to handle it. Face it, Rodney. There’s something that other people actually do better than you.”
“Oh, please. There are a lot of things that others do better than me. Off the top of my head I’d say small talk, ice skate, sing and… word search puzzles. Those are just too lame to even bother trying.” I sighed and stood up. “I feel like I’m letting him down.”
“Give it a day or so, Rodney. This reaction will pass.”
I wondered if my guilt ever would.
----
Jennifer was right, of course. The throwing up and other stuff finally eased over the next couple days. Sheppard was still a mess, and coughing like a tubercular chain smoker and all that plus the puking and the feeding tube had turned his throat to raw meat. The man was never much for talk in the first place but now he was practically mute.
Which was fine for chess, thankfully.
I breezed in, pulling the curtain shut behind me, board and box of pieces under my arm after getting the all clear from the nurses.
Sheppard, propped up on a mound of pillows, looked up at my entrance. The nose feeding tube was gone, thank God, and a can of Ensure sat on a pushed aside bedtable.
His eyebrows rose with surprise at my presence.
I pretended not to notice and busied myself with pulling the bedtable over his lap, pushing aside the half-empty can and unfolding the board. I opened the lid of the box and pulled out a white piece, a king by chance, and placed it in its proper square on his side of the board. I waited to see if my peace offering of first move would be recognized.
There was a pause as Sheppard stared at the piece then he met my eyes and nodded. Gestured with his hand for me to keep going.
With a mental sigh of relief, my apology accepted, I set the rest of the pieces up then pulled up a chair to wait for his opening move.
With a shaky hand and his braced fingers held aloft, Sheppard eased a pawn out two squares.
Two moves later, when his queen came out, I could already tell his heart really wasn’t in the game. “Really, Sheppard? A Napoleon Opening? We all know how that worked out for him.”
Sheppard’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the piece he’d just moved. He shook his head but rolled his hand in a keep going gesture.
Five moves later, I was already out of the scholar’s mate he tried to force and four white pieces were back in the box. I moved my bishop, setting up a fianchetto, and waited for him to notice.
He didn’t.
As I looked up from my piece I saw his eyes not on the board but scanning around the little ten by ten cubicle.
I looked around myself, saw nothing but white fabric screens. “What?”
Sheppard’s gaze flicked my way and he quickly pushed his rook four squares forward. I almost groaned. I could already envision a mate in three moves.
I ignored the opening and moved my knight to take one of his pawns instead. The small plastic piece joined its brothers in the box. And Sheppard was back to staring at his walls.
“What?” I asked again.
Sheppard gave me an uneasy look. “Open,” he rasped. His eyes darted at the narrow gap in the curtains.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not open; don’t worry, no one can see in.” Sheppard was a private man by nature and what with the whole gown and tubes thing, I figured he’d appreciate my concern for his privacy.
“Open. Please.”
“You want it open? What for?”
Sheppard sighed and dropped his head back into his pillows, stared at the ceiling tiles.
I recognized a pout when I saw one. I was the master of the pout; ask my mother. I rose and pulled the curtain open a foot. “There. You now have a spectacular view of Lt Miranda. He’s in for appendicitis. And to his left you’ll notice Dr. Something or Other. I think he got a hernia - probably lifting a test tube. Are you happy?”
After a few minutes of watching him stare at the fascinating new doorway and the blanket-covered lumps in the other beds I cleared my throat. When that got no reaction I tapped the board. “Your move.”
With barely a glance at the pieces Sheppard moved his queen along the diagonal and took one of my pawns. And left it right in the path of my bishop.
“You’re not even trying,” I muttered as I pulled my bishop back.
Sheppard continued his half-hearted pushing around of pieces but his eyes rarely strayed from his white walls. After basically playing keep away - it was actually more challenging to keep finding moves not to put him in check- for the next few moves I eventually took two more of his pieces, leaving him with his king, queen and one rook.
Sheppard seemed to finally take notice of how badly he was doing. He reached out to move his queen and accidentally hit my king with the tip of a finger brace, knocking it over.
“Ah, if only it were that easy,” I smiled.
Sheppard mouthed a ‘sorry’ and reached out to prop the piece back up, knocking over my bishop in the process.
“Is that any way to treat a man of the cloth, Sheppard?”
It was a lame joke, I know. But the response it got was wholly unexpected.
Sheppard swatted his hand at the pieces and knocked them all over.
“What the hell, Sheppard?” I fumed as I fumbled to catch a knight hurdling off the bedtable onto the floor. To be fair, there weren’t many pieces left on the board and he did kinda swat them toward the box but still.
As the last piece dropped into the box I looked up, ready to berate him for his childishness… Sheppard was staring at his hands on the bed. At his broken fingers, held in place with little more than aluminum and some padding.
He still hadn’t said much about what had happened on the planet. I knew he’d nodded and shook his head through some basic questions; softballs that Lorne threw him for the sake of Landry and the necessary reports. His injuries spoke enough for what he had endured.
Torture. Brutal, sadistic, stupid torture. And for what? From what we’d gathered from the communiqués with Gold Robe and his toadies, the VIP that had been taken was the only real goal. Sheppard and the other two were collateral damage, taken to sweeten the pot but hardly necessary.
Sheppard continued to stare at his fingers, twiddling them slowly, haltingly, with a grimace on his face the whole time.
With a sigh I rattled the box a little to draw his attention. “I guess it must be hard, your fingers like that. You look a little like Edward Scissorhands. Huh. Sheppard Bracefingers.”
I was already kicking myself for the joke - once again letting my thoughts take the express train from brain to mouth - but Sheppard gave me a lopsided grin.
“You actually look a lot like Johnny Depp did. Especially the hair.”
The grin tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it, McKay.” Even though his voice was a raspy ghost of what it normally was, it sounded (thankfully) familiar.
“So. I guess we’re all done playing chess. Let’s call it a draw, shall we?”
Sheppard nodded, then whispered, “Sorry.” He swept his hand in a pantomime of his board clearing.
“Oh, please,” I said, waving off his apology. “I’ve thrown worse tantrums when we’re out of coffee.”
“Yeah, you have.” He eased slowly back in the mound of pillows propping him up, and resumed staring at the opening in the curtain.
“What is so fascinating?” I looked out and saw a nurse fiddling with Lt Miranda’s IV. “She’s what? Like sixty? Never took you for the Mrs. Robinson thing, although she is kinda hot,” I added conspiratorially.
But Sheppard was looking past her. At the next open doorway out into the front triage area.
Before I could make a comment, Nurse Robinson started walking our way. She bustled in with a smile for Sheppard and a glare at me - I think she was the one who gave me my last set of inoculations and I may have whined. A little.
“How are you feeling, Colonel?”
Sheppard gave her a noncommittal shrug with his good shoulder.
“Considering he’s 90% plaster, gauze and stitches, that seems a pretty silly question to ask,” I muttered.
Sheppard shot me a glare of his own but quickly pasted on a smile for the nurse.
She’d clearly been around the block - or worked with Sheppard in the past, because she wasn’t buying it.
She picked up the trigger to his morphine pump and pushed the button with an exasperated sigh. “It’s called a PCA because it’s supposed to be patient controlled anesthesia, Colonel.”
“I am controlling it,” Sheppard rasped.
“By choosing not to use it.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Sheppard gave me this look - a grateful look? But before I could figure it out his eyes shut down and his body relaxed. Melted, actually, into the bed. It wasn’t until seeing him so comfortable that I realized how hard he’d been working at looking relaxed. The most powerful narcotic known to man at his brace-covered fingertips, and he chose to struggle against using it. To assert control again, over even this small thing, in a situation where he had to cede control over even the most basic of life functions to others. Colonel Control Freak had found a way.
While the nurse changed out his IV his breathing evened out, and he began to lightly snore, even as she was taking his blood pressure. She adjusted the tubes in and at his nose then pulled the blanket up with a motherly touch.
I left with Nurse Robinson. But after she shut the curtain, I pushed it open a few inches.
----
“Conclusion”
Rating: PG-13
Warning: None
Genre: H/C, angst, friendship.
Word Count: 12k-
Summary: Rodney and the team work to bring John home, then fight to bring him out of the darkness. Set post S5.
Written for : linziday for the sheppard_hc Secret Santa exchange. Prompt at the end.
Thanks to kristen999 for the beta.
---
Whether we ever wanted to admit or not, I think we all thought we were a little… not better… maybe cooler? than the SG1ers. Yeah, maybe they were first, going through the gate, fighting aliens, bringing some of them home… but they never got to leave their own galaxy. All their fighting and friending was done in our veritable backyard. Now Pegasus? That was like Marco Polo in China. James Cook, sailing to the farthest corners of the globe. And we went there. Lived there, for five years.
So being back in the Milky Way seemed a bit of a back step. When you’ve taken on Wraith in superhives, and won, and destroyed a whole planet of Replicators… you get to thinking that anything you’d find in your backyard would be rather tame.
Being forced to spend all this time back on Earth, with her bureaucracy and politics and Starbucks and Mickie D’s on every corner… well, it wasn’t all that surprising that Sheppard would find it all more than a little boring. Confining. Stultifying, I think, sums it up best.
Ronon had been the first of us to head out. I think he lasted a whole week before Landry had tired of seeing damage reports for the walls in the facility and the injury reports from the gym. Conan’s normally glowery face actually brightened for a split second when the General threw him onto an SG team and sent him out to burn off some of his frustration.
Teyla went out next. She was sent out on missions with planets we’d already made contact with, to use her diplomatic skills and weave a little of her special Teyla magic with some of our grumpier neighbors. But she’d gone with her gun strapped on and there was little doubt she sometimes itched to use it. She may have been born a farmer’s daughter but she’d grown into our own little Xena, warrior princess.
Me? I never went out. No need. I had my lab and all the minions and coffee they could bring me. It was quiet, just the way I liked it. No daily threats of impending doom. The most danger I faced was my morning commute through Colorado Springs, dodging all those crazy bicyclers giving me dirty looks, even though I drive a Prius.
It actually took Sheppard six months before he finally succumbed to the daily grind. He’d spent so much time, tilting at windmills, fighting to get Atlantis moved back to Pegasus. It’d been one meeting too many. He stormed out during a lunch break in what felt like the hundredth session with the IOA and never come back. I’d been in that meeting, had seen the stony faces that stared back at him as he’d listed, again, the myriad reasons why we needed to go back. I can’t say I blamed him; Sisyphus had a cake job compared to the uphill battle John Sheppard fought.
So he’d talked to Landry. The old man had probably been just as happy to toss him out with Ronon. Sheppard’s face had been just about as glowery and his constant running through the halls at all hours had raised a few complaints. Okay, maybe some of them were mine, but it got really annoying.
The three of them made their own little SG team. SG-13. Go figure. They’d mucked about the Milky Way, starting with some of the planets the gate teams had already explored, just to get their feet wet. They regaled me with stories of their little adventures over the occasional dinner in the mess; they told the tales big but there wasn’t the same spark. I told myself that I was the smart one, staying behind. I could read about many of the same things they saw in any of the hundreds of records on file, not that I would ever have the time or really want to. I’d brought some toys out of Atlantis before they mothballed the old gal and Carter and Lee had some Goa’uld and Asgard tech that kept me busy. Visions of what could be done if I could fuse all three together kept me company while I worked and sometimes even chased the Wraith and whales out of my dreams at night. And of course, there was that new something I was trying to develop with Jennifer, awkward as it sometimes was.
We all settled in to what passed for normalcy for us. Life was… well, if it wasn’t good, it was enough.
And then, as it always seems to do, life took an abrupt turn into the shitter, colloquially speaking. So much for the safety of our own backyard.
SG-13 was checking out MJ2-YD3, a planet at a developmental stage somewhere between steam engines and nuclear fission. Several hours after missing their last radio check-in Teyla and Ronon staggered through the gate with a single Marine and two freaked out geeks, all of them bleeding from one wound or another. Sheppard, another Marine and a geologist had been taken captive.
A coup or something, I never really did get all the details straight. SG13, along with a minister or prefect or whatever they called them on that backwater planet, had been taken hostage by the Rebel Alliance or whatever the hell they called themselves. Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon did what they do best; shoot guns and sacrifice themselves for others. Half the team managed to escape, barely. By the time they’d managed to wrestle some stitches and bandages onto Teyla and Ronon and they’d headed back out, the rebels were gone along with the captives.
We went back to the planet, scanned and scanned, then we scanned some more. The whole reason the stupid geologist was there in the first place was to investigate some stupid ore that covered the stupid planet. And it looked like that stupid ore was affecting transmissions.
Search parties scoured the planet but their technology turned out to be a bit more advanced than steam engines. They’d disappeared down the proverbial rabbit hole and all our hunting parties came up empty.
We never really gave up hope. I mean, this was Sheppard we’re talking about. I’d thought too many goodbyes to the man, only to have him pop up on the radio with a smug one-liner. But then days turned into weeks. When the weeks turned into a month, none of us noted the anniversary out loud…
Of course, with Sheppard, it had to be all about the timing.
-------
As I was suiting up for the day’s search efforts I got a call from Landry. Not a particularly rare thing but with all of us on edge… okay, me, on edge, I couldn’t help but feel that oh, so familiar twinge of foreboding.
I tried to maintain a little civility, talking to the man, because he was Sheppard’s commanding officer and he wasn’t always a complete asshole. “Kinda busy here, General. Can it wait?” Hey, I asked.
“No, Dr. McKay, I don’t think it can,” came Landry’s reply. I tensed at how somber and serious his voice was.
“Did you - was there- did you hear something?”
“Just get your ass in my office, doctor.” And he hung up. So much for his attempt at civility with me.
By the time I got there Ronon, Teyla and Lorne were already there, ready to go in their off world gear.
Landry had called us all in to his office, told us the SGC was preparing to have Sheppard, Bennett and Potter listed as officially Missing, Presumed Dead. Paperwork and all that. Relatives to be contacted, affairs to be put in order. Bureaucracy at its finest.
We stood staring at the three sets of documents ready to be filed in triplicate.
“This doesn’t mean we stop looking,” Landry said.
“Damn straight, it doesn’t,” Ronon growled, his massive arms crossed so tightly I wondered how he could breathe.
I caught Lorne glancing away, his eyes downcast. “What?”
He looked up at me and shook his head. Did that meaningful look back and forth with Landry that drove me nuts. “What?” I demanded again. “The looks - what?”
Lorne blew out a long breath. “It means we can keep looking but our resources will be seriously curtailed.”
“Curtailed? Is that military speak? What resources?”
“Manpower, for one,” Lorne replied. “Personnel will be redirected.”
“God, I hate how you people talk. Who will be left to keep up the search?”
Lorne gave another one of those looks at his boss then at the two others in the room. “SGC has no control over Teyla and Ronon.”
Teyla’s head bowed as she fumed. “Ronon and I are not enough. Cannot this paperwork be held off, General?”
Landry shook his head. “Afraid not, Teyla. Look, whether we like it or not, the SGC program can’t grind to a halt over these three men. We’ve scoured that planet from pole to pole; we can’t waste-“
“Waste?” I managed to choke out.
“We can’t expend any more man hours or resources. We’re maintaining diplomatic contact with the planet’s leaders and I’ve been assured they are continuing their efforts. They lost a man, too, remember.”
“Are you kidding me?” I spluttered. “You want to leave their lives in the hands of strangers? And barely advanced ones at that? No. No way.”
“Look, I understand your frustration, Dr McKay-“
“No! No, you don’t. I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. Sheppard would never leave anyone behind like this.”
Lorne looked at me with the most devastated expression. I wheeled on him. “You! Your whole team was presumed dead! We had bodies in our morgue, but we never stopped looking.”
Sheppard’s sidekick looked like a kicked puppy, and it didn’t even make me feel better.
“I remember, Dr. McKay,” he said softly. He dashed another resentful glance at Landry then stiffened. “I have my orders.”
“Disobey them. Sheppard would.”
The room got really quiet. Ronon was boring holes through Landry’s head and I almost expected his blaster to come out, fully charged.
The general was stone-faced; I knew that expression, had worn it myself on more than one occasion. He wasn’t budging.
“Fine,” I muttered. “I’m going back to trying to recalibrate the scanners. I’m working on a program to compensate for the interference.”
“You have more pressing work, Dr. McKay,” Landry said, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t,” I shot back. I saw Landry’s mouth open and I knew what was coming. “I quit.”
“Dr. McKay-“
I could feel the heat in my face and that damned neck spasm I get when I’m all worked up. “I quit. SGC has no more say in what M Rodney McKay PhD PhD does anymore.”
“Rodney-“
“No, Teyla. I won’t work for an organization that-“ My speech was cut off by the sound of Landry’s phone ringing. The general picked up the receiver, listened briefly, then dropped it back onto the cradle with a stunned expression.
“What now?” I groaned.
The general’s bushy eyebrows rose as he pinned me with a steely gaze. “That was Walter. The team on the planet picked up Colonel Sheppard’s sub-q transmitter a few moments ago.”
The group of us all started talking at once and Landry raised a hand. “Before Walter could even alert anyone, MJ2-YD3 contacted us directly. They have Sheppard… they’re sending him home.”
Have as in …. I didn’t want to ask. I swallowed hard. “Is he…?”
Landry gave me a grim smile. “He’s alive.”
-----
Alive was a bit of an overstatement. What came through the gate was barely recognizable as a human being.
Two goons in silly burgundy robes - seriously? None of these planets ever developed tee shirts and jeans?- followed behind a nebbishy man in an even sillier gold robe. They held between them a stretcher. They said it was Sheppard under the blanket. All I could see was some skin the pale white of a cave dweller, bruises, bandages and hair. The hair was what finally made me realize it really was him. Longer, matted and melding into a mountain man beard, it was still identifiable as Sheppard’s porcupine with hair gel do.
A medical team swarmed in from behind us after our goons gave the all clear, picked up the litter and whisked it away before we could even see if he was awake.
Gold Robe held something in his hands. After sizing us up he glanced between Ronon and Landry, trying to figure out which was the leader. The general finally cleared his throat and Gold Robe flashed a sickly smile, gave him a kind of head bob and solemnly handed the package over. Landry grimaced and held it away from him, wrinkling his nose like he’d been handed a dirty diaper. Then his face fell. I swear, the old grump’s stone face actually crumpled a little. He lifted a piece of fabric; it made a hollow clinking sound. It was a tattered, dirty piece of black cloth; as it fell open we could see it was all that was left of Sheppard’s tee shirt. His dog tags were tangled up with it.
“I can only offer the sincerest of apologies for the manner in which your man was treated,” Gold Robe said, with another head bob.
“Man?” Landry barked. “We had men on that planet. Where are the other two?”
After another quaking head bob - looked like the little man was plagued with my neck spasm- Gold Robe stammered out, “The exchange was meant for all of your people, and ours. But we were too late. The other of your people did not survive. They were consigned to the lye pits. Your Colonel Sheppard will verify that for you… should he survive. But he did ask us to bring these icons to you.” From a pocket he pulled out another set of dog tags and an SGC jacket patch from the geologist, Dr Bennett.
Lorne reached out and took them. Just stared at them in his hands before shoving them into his own pocket. “Where are these lye pits?”
Gold Robe’s eyes widened. “Why would you want to go there?”
Lorne looked at me, shame in his eyes. “Because we don’t leave people behind.”
----
So Sheppard was back, on the very day he was to be declared dead. See what I mean about the man’s timing? By the time we got read the butcher’s bill of Sheppard’s condition I think some were readying to get the paperwork back out.
He’d been shot during the initial gunfight. The barbarians on the planet had darned him up like an old sock and the wound in his shoulder, even after all this time, still wasn’t healed and needed to be fixed. Broken fingers and toes, a hairline fracture in his ankle, broken ribs and internal injuries that had required surgery of their own. He’d almost lost a kidney and there was no guarantee yet he’d keep it.
And during his stay at their version of the Hanoi Hilton, food beyond bread and water was apparently not on the menu. Sheppard already had the body fat of an Olsen twin and a month on his impromptu crash diet did him no favors.
On top of all that, a respiratory infection. Of course. Because the man never does anything halfway.
He was back four days before he regained consciousness. I was the lucky one to be there when it happened.
When his eyes first fluttered open it barely even registered. They’d done that bunches of times while he’d been out, but they always shut back down, not to open again for hours. After they stayed open for more than a brief second I put my laptop down. My hand hovered over the radio at my ear. The staff had already yelled me at repeatedly for my false alarm calls.
Then they really opened. Like wide. Freaked out.
“Hey, Sheppard. It’s me, your old pal Rodney.”
He didn’t respond to me. Vocally. But his eyes spoke volumes. They spun madly as he tried to take in every inch of the white-walled cubicle.
One hand, three fingers in padded aluminum braces, started clawing at the sheet covering him. I grabbed his hand, instinctively, even though he was a petri dish of various infections. It was hot. Hotter than human flesh should ever be.
Those pinwheeling orbs immediately shot up and he stared at me. Through me, at first.
“C’mon, John,” I tried again. “Relax, it’s just me.” I scratched at my stubble-covered face. “I know I haven’t cleaned up in a while but I can’t be that scary.”
Then his too-hot hand wrapped around mine, hard. Harder than it had a right to in his condition; the metal dug into my palm. His eyes, glazed with fever, bore into mine. Then his lips moved but only a raspy whispering came out.
I leaned closer, my breath held for his sake and mine. I could feel the heat radiating off of him.
“Don’t give up.”
His hand squeezed even tighter, broken fingers and all, as I shook my head, not understanding. “John, I-“
“They’re… coming. For us.”
Before I could say another word the cavalry finally arrived. Lam and her minions coursed into the tiny cubicle and I was swept aside by the crowd of white coats and scrubs.
By the time they left and I was allowed in he’d fallen back asleep and I was left with gnawing guilt at the realization that while we got him back, we never came for them.
----
The fever finally broke late the next day and Lam started using when’s, not if’s when talking about Sheppard’s recovery.
She may have been more optimistic about his condition, but to me, it looked like he was even worse than when we’d brought him home.
He was thin and shaky, covered in a sheen of sweat. He coughed almost non-stop, only pausing to dry heave bile and his enteric feeding into a kidney dish, and what wasn’t coming out one end was coming out the other. Jennifer explained that it was all to be expected, between the infections, the antibiotics and reintroduction to food but to me, he looked like misery personified. He could barely speak, but his expression, when he was actually awake and looking at you, just said, “Shoot me. Please.”
Teyla and Ronon, were, of course, maddeningly calm about the whole situation. I couldn’t stand to spend more than a few minutes at a time with him but they sat at his bedside, like good friends are supposed to. Even though he barely spoke to them, they stayed, through his lungs and stomach being turned inside out, through the bedding changes and through smells and sounds I just couldn’t tolerate.
I had just started to enter the cubicle, my fifth attempt of the day, when I heard that gut-twisting retching. I can’t even handle simulated vomiting on TV - I threw up during the blueberry pie contest scene in Stand By Me and never did see how the movie ended- and this was live- with sound effects and full smell-o-vision.
My stomach threatened a rebellion of its own, my coffee and bearclaw beginning their own uprising. I wheeled about and headed back out, running-literally- into Jennifer.
“Rodney! What’s wrong? Is it the colonel?”
I shook my head, swallowing hard, not even able to answer her.
“You’re white as a ghost. Come sit down.”
She led me over to a stool, eased me down and, of course, started taking my pulse. Sheppard was in agony, and I was getting fussed over. I snatched my hand away and wiped the cold sweat from my upper lip. “I’m fine. I just can’t - it’s… God, I’m a shitty friend.”
A smile twitched at her lips. “You’ve always had a weak stomach, Rodney. It’s completely natural to experience a physiological response to that kind of stimuli.”
“Completely natural for me, you mean.”
“Some people are just… better suited to handle it. Face it, Rodney. There’s something that other people actually do better than you.”
“Oh, please. There are a lot of things that others do better than me. Off the top of my head I’d say small talk, ice skate, sing and… word search puzzles. Those are just too lame to even bother trying.” I sighed and stood up. “I feel like I’m letting him down.”
“Give it a day or so, Rodney. This reaction will pass.”
I wondered if my guilt ever would.
----
Jennifer was right, of course. The throwing up and other stuff finally eased over the next couple days. Sheppard was still a mess, and coughing like a tubercular chain smoker and all that plus the puking and the feeding tube had turned his throat to raw meat. The man was never much for talk in the first place but now he was practically mute.
Which was fine for chess, thankfully.
I breezed in, pulling the curtain shut behind me, board and box of pieces under my arm after getting the all clear from the nurses.
Sheppard, propped up on a mound of pillows, looked up at my entrance. The nose feeding tube was gone, thank God, and a can of Ensure sat on a pushed aside bedtable.
His eyebrows rose with surprise at my presence.
I pretended not to notice and busied myself with pulling the bedtable over his lap, pushing aside the half-empty can and unfolding the board. I opened the lid of the box and pulled out a white piece, a king by chance, and placed it in its proper square on his side of the board. I waited to see if my peace offering of first move would be recognized.
There was a pause as Sheppard stared at the piece then he met my eyes and nodded. Gestured with his hand for me to keep going.
With a mental sigh of relief, my apology accepted, I set the rest of the pieces up then pulled up a chair to wait for his opening move.
With a shaky hand and his braced fingers held aloft, Sheppard eased a pawn out two squares.
Two moves later, when his queen came out, I could already tell his heart really wasn’t in the game. “Really, Sheppard? A Napoleon Opening? We all know how that worked out for him.”
Sheppard’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the piece he’d just moved. He shook his head but rolled his hand in a keep going gesture.
Five moves later, I was already out of the scholar’s mate he tried to force and four white pieces were back in the box. I moved my bishop, setting up a fianchetto, and waited for him to notice.
He didn’t.
As I looked up from my piece I saw his eyes not on the board but scanning around the little ten by ten cubicle.
I looked around myself, saw nothing but white fabric screens. “What?”
Sheppard’s gaze flicked my way and he quickly pushed his rook four squares forward. I almost groaned. I could already envision a mate in three moves.
I ignored the opening and moved my knight to take one of his pawns instead. The small plastic piece joined its brothers in the box. And Sheppard was back to staring at his walls.
“What?” I asked again.
Sheppard gave me an uneasy look. “Open,” he rasped. His eyes darted at the narrow gap in the curtains.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not open; don’t worry, no one can see in.” Sheppard was a private man by nature and what with the whole gown and tubes thing, I figured he’d appreciate my concern for his privacy.
“Open. Please.”
“You want it open? What for?”
Sheppard sighed and dropped his head back into his pillows, stared at the ceiling tiles.
I recognized a pout when I saw one. I was the master of the pout; ask my mother. I rose and pulled the curtain open a foot. “There. You now have a spectacular view of Lt Miranda. He’s in for appendicitis. And to his left you’ll notice Dr. Something or Other. I think he got a hernia - probably lifting a test tube. Are you happy?”
After a few minutes of watching him stare at the fascinating new doorway and the blanket-covered lumps in the other beds I cleared my throat. When that got no reaction I tapped the board. “Your move.”
With barely a glance at the pieces Sheppard moved his queen along the diagonal and took one of my pawns. And left it right in the path of my bishop.
“You’re not even trying,” I muttered as I pulled my bishop back.
Sheppard continued his half-hearted pushing around of pieces but his eyes rarely strayed from his white walls. After basically playing keep away - it was actually more challenging to keep finding moves not to put him in check- for the next few moves I eventually took two more of his pieces, leaving him with his king, queen and one rook.
Sheppard seemed to finally take notice of how badly he was doing. He reached out to move his queen and accidentally hit my king with the tip of a finger brace, knocking it over.
“Ah, if only it were that easy,” I smiled.
Sheppard mouthed a ‘sorry’ and reached out to prop the piece back up, knocking over my bishop in the process.
“Is that any way to treat a man of the cloth, Sheppard?”
It was a lame joke, I know. But the response it got was wholly unexpected.
Sheppard swatted his hand at the pieces and knocked them all over.
“What the hell, Sheppard?” I fumed as I fumbled to catch a knight hurdling off the bedtable onto the floor. To be fair, there weren’t many pieces left on the board and he did kinda swat them toward the box but still.
As the last piece dropped into the box I looked up, ready to berate him for his childishness… Sheppard was staring at his hands on the bed. At his broken fingers, held in place with little more than aluminum and some padding.
He still hadn’t said much about what had happened on the planet. I knew he’d nodded and shook his head through some basic questions; softballs that Lorne threw him for the sake of Landry and the necessary reports. His injuries spoke enough for what he had endured.
Torture. Brutal, sadistic, stupid torture. And for what? From what we’d gathered from the communiqués with Gold Robe and his toadies, the VIP that had been taken was the only real goal. Sheppard and the other two were collateral damage, taken to sweeten the pot but hardly necessary.
Sheppard continued to stare at his fingers, twiddling them slowly, haltingly, with a grimace on his face the whole time.
With a sigh I rattled the box a little to draw his attention. “I guess it must be hard, your fingers like that. You look a little like Edward Scissorhands. Huh. Sheppard Bracefingers.”
I was already kicking myself for the joke - once again letting my thoughts take the express train from brain to mouth - but Sheppard gave me a lopsided grin.
“You actually look a lot like Johnny Depp did. Especially the hair.”
The grin tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it, McKay.” Even though his voice was a raspy ghost of what it normally was, it sounded (thankfully) familiar.
“So. I guess we’re all done playing chess. Let’s call it a draw, shall we?”
Sheppard nodded, then whispered, “Sorry.” He swept his hand in a pantomime of his board clearing.
“Oh, please,” I said, waving off his apology. “I’ve thrown worse tantrums when we’re out of coffee.”
“Yeah, you have.” He eased slowly back in the mound of pillows propping him up, and resumed staring at the opening in the curtain.
“What is so fascinating?” I looked out and saw a nurse fiddling with Lt Miranda’s IV. “She’s what? Like sixty? Never took you for the Mrs. Robinson thing, although she is kinda hot,” I added conspiratorially.
But Sheppard was looking past her. At the next open doorway out into the front triage area.
Before I could make a comment, Nurse Robinson started walking our way. She bustled in with a smile for Sheppard and a glare at me - I think she was the one who gave me my last set of inoculations and I may have whined. A little.
“How are you feeling, Colonel?”
Sheppard gave her a noncommittal shrug with his good shoulder.
“Considering he’s 90% plaster, gauze and stitches, that seems a pretty silly question to ask,” I muttered.
Sheppard shot me a glare of his own but quickly pasted on a smile for the nurse.
She’d clearly been around the block - or worked with Sheppard in the past, because she wasn’t buying it.
She picked up the trigger to his morphine pump and pushed the button with an exasperated sigh. “It’s called a PCA because it’s supposed to be patient controlled anesthesia, Colonel.”
“I am controlling it,” Sheppard rasped.
“By choosing not to use it.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Sheppard gave me this look - a grateful look? But before I could figure it out his eyes shut down and his body relaxed. Melted, actually, into the bed. It wasn’t until seeing him so comfortable that I realized how hard he’d been working at looking relaxed. The most powerful narcotic known to man at his brace-covered fingertips, and he chose to struggle against using it. To assert control again, over even this small thing, in a situation where he had to cede control over even the most basic of life functions to others. Colonel Control Freak had found a way.
While the nurse changed out his IV his breathing evened out, and he began to lightly snore, even as she was taking his blood pressure. She adjusted the tubes in and at his nose then pulled the blanket up with a motherly touch.
I left with Nurse Robinson. But after she shut the curtain, I pushed it open a few inches.
----
“Conclusion”