Every Day I Recognize What's Deceased and What's Alive (not dead yet challenge)
Title: Every Day I Recognize What's Deceased and What's Alive
Author:
vain_glorious
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Ronon
Warnings: Minor drug use
Words: 1, 419
Summary: Ronon isn't dead yet.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Ronon Dex broke his ankle on the planet with sharp, spiny plants. He stepped in a rodent hole in the sand and lost his footing. He hadn’t had shoes at the time; his boots had been ruined the previous week when he walked through a puddle of industrial waste on an empty world that had fought against the Wraith with science and had lost in toxic wreckage. His leg twisted underneath him and then he was down, shock shooting from his toes straight to his gut. He didn’t have time to stay on the ground, but he knew the immediate numbness and tingling, the involuntary trembling and sweating.
Rodney McKay called the pointy plants ‘cactus’ and he knew they were sharp and painful, but he still fell against a row of them and seemed surprised when it hurt. He started screaming like an attacking Ohirion bird swooping in on its prey, and he managed to bite Ronon for wrapping his hand around McKay’s mouth and trying to hold it shut.
The spiny plants came in all sizes, the worst being the tiny ones Ronon couldn’t see until he stepped on them. He wondered if the Wraith sensors could detect them, and if they did any harm to his pursuers when they dropped out of the sky. He didn’t think so.
He had to haul McKay off the cactuses, keeping one hand over his mouth the entire time because he could feel the man trying to squeal some more and the only thing he was going to do was alert their pursuers to their exact location. Ronon almost left his hand there, except that McKay sincerely starting chewing on his palm and he grunted an assent when Ronon made him promise not to scream.
Ronon crawled on his belly for as long as it took the sun move from the center of the sky towards the Western horizon. He could see a mountain face, the only thing standing up against the expanse of golden land. He was too far from the Ring of the Ancestors to turn back, so he aimed for it.
The Cactus planet had caves, too. He left McKay as far back as the man would go - Ronon didn’t see any ‘bears’ - and barricaded the entrance with loose boulders and brush. It wouldn’t have fooled the Wraith, but the party chasing them was only armed with bows and arrows and the belief that killing Sheppard’s team was better than Atlantis discovering the trade pact had been broken.
His ankle was so swollen, it was hard to tell if he had it aligned right, but Ronon wrapped it in his spare shirt as tightly as he could. He pulled himself upright using the cave walls as handholds, but agony shot through his leg when he tried to bear weight on it. Ronon dragged himself backward, around a curve in the cave. He could see the entryway from there, and he propped the ankle up against his other knee and rested the barrel of his gun across his shin.
Ronon spent some time plucking the spines from McKay’s back and arms. A bunch came out when he pulled the shirt off, and McKay had howled. He sprayed him down with some of that magical numbing medical stuff, though, and McKay popped half a bottle of aspirin and would have taken something stronger if Ronon hadn’t palmed the morphine and hid it. Drugs tended to make Rodney talk more and make less sense. He wondered if Beckett knew the man carried a disassembled medkit in his pants pockets. Their radios didn’t work - probably the cave walls were too thick. It didn’t stop McKay from occasionally bellowing “Sheppard!” or “Teyla!”, as if they might suddenly be heard.
Ronon blasted the Wraith in half when it appeared in the cave entryway. He wanted to get its weapon but it would have taken him too long to drag himself over, and he didn’t know if it was alone. He stayed where he was, gun aimed out into the descending night.
Even though the natives had stolen McKay’s pack and weapon, Ronon wasn’t surprised when the man grabbed his discarded pants, carefully rifled through the fabric to avoid the remaining needles, and produced a handful of powerbars. Without being asked, he threw one at Ronon and stuffed another one into his mouth. Ronon ripped his open and took a small bite.
“Least I won’t die hungry,” McKay said with his mouth full.
“Not gonna die,” said Ronon. He took another bite of his powerbar. He eyed the rest of McKay’s collection - there were at least two with orange wrappers, which meant peanut butter. He wanted one of those.
“Just without pants,” McKay continued, ignoring Ronon. “And cactus needles in my ass.”
Ronon didn’t have any medicine. He knew he needed to get the swelling down, but the only water he had was warm from the desert heat and he wasn’t going to waste drinking water when he didn’t know where anymore was. Instead, when close to an hour had passed without any more Wraith appearing in the archway, Ronon broke open his pack and rolled a cigarette filled with Anjori flakes. It took the swelling down and got him so high he couldn’t feel his lower body anymore.
McKay reluctantly shared one of his peanut butter powerbars. He bitched about his back and kept comparing himself to some earth animal called a porcupine, which must have been covered in red welts like he was. Ronon mostly ignored him, listening for approaching natives or, better, the sound of a Jumper landing nearby.
Ronon ran out of water on the third day. By then he could bear weight enough to walk short distances and hop when the pain became too much. He also ran out of Anjori weed and his ankle hurt a lot. No more Wraith had shown up, which probably meant the rock face was blocking their sensors. They’d be waiting for him out in the open, but he had to try to make it to the Ring of the Ancestors, anyway.
Sheppard and Teyla showed up the following day, which was good because Ronon was growing low on patience that was at the moment preventing him from pinning McKay down and swiping the rest of the powerbars McKay was pretending not to have. The natives shot arrows at the Jumper, which was kind of funny, and McKay launched into his complaints all over again, until he remembered he was in his boxers in front of Teyla and got completely discombobulated, which was also kind of funny.
The path to the Ring of the Ancestors was miraculously clear. Ronon couldn’t move that fast, but he forced himself to nearly run. His ankle hurt for months after that, but he made himself walk normally so it would heal in the right position. He used a thick branch as a walking stick that doubled as a staff weapon, though it made him feel like an old man and the first Wraith he encountered broke it in half.
On Atlantis, McKay loudly informed the infirmary that Ronon was a terrible doctor, and mean, and extracted splinters with all the gentleness of Godzilla in Tokyo, which Ronon didn’t understand. Beckett seemed pleased that for once McKay wasn’t yelling at him, but he did make sure to tell Ronon that he had treated McKay properly and their patient was absolutely fine. Ronon left then, but not before liberating the rest of McKay’s powerbars from the remnants of his pants.
On Atlantis, the doctor that had taken the Wraith tracker from Ronon’s back gave him the first medical examination he’d had since the annual one given to all Satedan soldiers. The man was still afraid of him, and kept the guards in the room for all but the most invasive parts. Ronon stayed still and quiet, moving only when instructed and speaking only to answer the doctor’s questions. His answers were usually wrong, for every time he described a body part as having been ‘broken’, the Ancestor technology scanning him seemed to disagree. It felt strange to have clinical hands laid on him, to have his body palpated and tested. The doctor was gentle and warned him in advance of what he was about to do, but Ronon was tense and wary. He wondered if he was sick and hurt, in ways the Ancestors could detect but he couldn’t feel.
“You’re remarkably healthy,” Beckett said, when Ronon put his clothes back on. “Your survival is down right incredible.”
~