Fic: "Runner? Ha." (Role Reversal Challenge)
Title: Runner? Ha.
Words: ~1600
Rating: no smut, so, I dunno, PG for danger?
A/N: I write in this 'verse rarely, mostly because not very many characters talk to me. Rodney occasionally does, so.
Runner? Ha.
The first thing Rodney thought as he woke up was that someone had seriously screwed up the environmental controls, apparently in a number of ways, because the temperature was all wrong for pretty much every purpose and what was that smell and besides, what, had someone replaced all the mattress fillings with rocks? Pointy ones?
He rolled over in an effort to do something about the jagged edge poking into his back, but that only left a worse angle jutting up into the meat of his shoulder, which hurt, and also set off a rattling cascade of what sounded like gravel, and what the hell was going on here?
When he opened his eyes, it occurred to him, in the instant between sitting up and letting out a profoundly unmanly squeak of horror, that probably he should have done so sooner, such as before making noise by shaking the rocks. Possibly on hearing the trickling water, for instance, which, all right, generally there wasn't running water in his own quarters when he wasn't in the act of showering, but a man could hope, right? There might have been someone showering in the next room. But the smell, that should have been an early giveaway, and honestly, gravel in his quarters was highly unlikely anyway, and certainly there were no decomposing corpses nor algae-slimed rocks nor sharp drops some ten inches from his sleeping position. He shifted again, uncomfortably aware that away from the edge was closer to the corpse, and really, ew, and how long had he been here, and actually, where was here?
And more importantly, where was his pack? And his ...everything else?
As he blinked and squinted and tried to find a power bar or, well, a canteen would be nice, or any sort of juice-heavy fruit, since obviously that water wasn't drinkable, not unless one had a burning desire for unknown gastrointestinal ruin, and okay, even a handful of crackers would have been something, but he didn't have anything at all, he tried to recall what he was doing here. He took as a given that dead-guy had been here longer than he had because even in this air, which probably more closely qualified as steam, that kind of decomp seemed improbable overnight, and also, he sort of remembered noticing the stench when he stopped here last night. Last night? Okay, so he'd come up here under his own power, that much he remembered, but he'd been exhausted, and not in the usual 'up for three days working out the formula on coffee and the annoyance of working with idiots' way, and it was making the details fuzzy. He recalled running, climbing up here from, from what? Through horrible wet foliage with clinging vines and--he shuddered--enormous probably-spiders with beady stalky eyes he'd avoided looking at too closely in the moonlight. And no one with him--no team, no weapons, well, all right, a knife, okay four knives, actually, tucked into weird little pockets in these pants, which, by the way chafed badly and clearly had been designed by a sadist on crack, but a knife, or four knives, didn't constitute a real weapon; it constituted an opportunity for adventures in unintended self-evisceration, and besides, he knew perfectly well he wasn't made for hand-to-hand combat. He was getting better, sure. Sheppard only usually had to rescue him a couple of times any given day, lately, and all right, given time to assess the terrain, he could arrange a tolerable ambush, especially given all these vines, but either way, a gun would have been a way better choice. But that was neither here nor there, and what he needed was something from which to create some sort of projectile or--
And what was that? He froze, straining to hear, aware of a new strain of rumble in amongst the sounds of running water and roughly seven hundred chirping, whirring, buzzing, dripping, flying, croaking, whickering, slithering varieties of wild creatures. Those were definitely voices. He gently patted his pockets, trying to remember the rules and find the knives because, all right, inadequate was certainly better than nonexistent, though honestly, would it have killed them to give him something to shoot with? But no. Anyway. Rules. Night time was safe, or so they'd said, though he wouldn’t have put it past them to play games with him about that, too, but assuming since he wasn't dead that that had been true, as soon as it was light, and it was probably, what, an hour or two after dawn? Yeah, they were looking for him. And he was supposed to already be running. Only, all right, apparently that climb up here where it had seemed at least marginally more safe than, say, remaining down there on the open bed of gravel, what with the cliff and all, had been even more outside his usual experience than he'd thought as he made it, because the only muscles in his body that weren't just on the edge of cramping were the ones in his face. Specifically, the smiling ones. The frowning ones were sore, too.
He wondered whether it would make more sense to just go ahead and jump back down. At least he'd be spared the whole life-sucking thing, which he'd heard was unpleasant, but then, with his luck, he'd probably get hung up in a vine, break both ankles, and then there would be the life-sucking anyway, with bonus ankle agony for his trouble.
He wondered how dead-guy had died. Or if there was anything useful on him, such as a gun. Or a slingshot. He glanced over and carefully rolled up onto his hands and knees, grimacing, then crawled the few feet for a closer, even more disgusting, look, which only demonstrated that he wasn't a forensic analyst because all he saw were worm-things and crawling-things and nothing that helped a bit.
The sounds--occasional low voices, and movement through foliage--were getting closer, coming up, and okay, he needed a plan.
He could throw dead-guy. Better chance of hitting them than he would have throwing knives, but it'd give away that he was up here, for sure.
He needed a better plan. Or any other plan, which would automatically be a better plan.
In the next fifteen seconds.
Crap. He circled around dead-guy and hoisted him. Sort of. His head stayed put, and one leg seemed like it might, too, but he was still something to throw, and maybe that would buy him another three minutes for Sheppard to come rescue him already, and also now that he had the body in his hands, he might as well use it as a weapon since at least he'd get some use out of having bright-green crawling things tracking dead-guy on his--well, not his; sadist designer's--jacket. He shuffled forward on the grassy strip, avoiding the gravel, and heaved.
Dead-guy crackled and crunched down through the greenery for several seconds, and the other noises stopped.
"McKay? That you?"
Rodney sat down with a thump, right on something squishy enough he didn't want to consider the options. "Sheppard?"
Sheppard's hair and eyes came up over the edge. "Hi. Nice welcome mat." He brushed bugs and debris out of his hair.
"What, you couldn’t have called out before you got up here and scared me half to death?" Rodney asked.
"Didn't expect you'd still be here." That was Ronon, swinging up over the edge as though it was as easy as hopping over the back of a couch to sit down, then offering a hand to Teyla behind him.
"Ronon located your starting point and calculated your likely rate of progress," she explained. "However, we had anticipated you would have made your way somewhat further, perhaps to the far side of the next ridge, in the time you had available. It seemed unwise to alert any Wraith who might be in the area when we didn't expect to be near you."
"Over the next--" Rodney stared. "Look, all right, you might have made it that far, but I--"
Ronon shook his head. "Took your abilities into account."
Rodney scowled, but before he could object further, Sheppard held up both hands. "Either way, we chose to come after you, once we'd taken care of the Wraith near your start point, who were, fortunately, busy bickering as to who was in charge of selecting worthwhile targets."
"Well it certainly wasn't me," Rodney said. "I could have told them, if they'd bothered to consult me. Though I suppose then they'd have just finished me off there and gone looking for a worthier one, so I suppose maybe I wouldn't, if I'd thought it through."
"Just as well we didn't try to guess where you'd end up, in any case." Sheppard shrugged and handed over his canteen, which had one of dead-guy's green bugs on the cap until he brushed it off, then jerked his head back toward the edge of the cliff. "Come on. We should get back before more Wraith show up."
Rodney unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then got to his feet, groaning, and took another long gulping drink before handing it back reluctantly. "I don't think I can get down. Getting up was--"
"You can," Ronon said. "Question is, how fast."
"What?"
Ronon arched an eyebrow. "Just step over the edge. You'll get down."
"Well yes, I meant, intact. Without anything broken. Obviously, gravity still works on this planet, since getting up here in the first place involved working against it, thanks."
"Have it your way." Ronon finished securing something to the gnarled trunk of the tree growing over the edge of the water and tugged, then handed a line to Rodney. Sheppard and Teyla had their own lines secure as well, and had already started down.
Rodney sighed and crawled backward the edge, then gingerly started to feel his way down.
Words: ~1600
Rating: no smut, so, I dunno, PG for danger?
A/N: I write in this 'verse rarely, mostly because not very many characters talk to me. Rodney occasionally does, so.
Runner? Ha.
The first thing Rodney thought as he woke up was that someone had seriously screwed up the environmental controls, apparently in a number of ways, because the temperature was all wrong for pretty much every purpose and what was that smell and besides, what, had someone replaced all the mattress fillings with rocks? Pointy ones?
He rolled over in an effort to do something about the jagged edge poking into his back, but that only left a worse angle jutting up into the meat of his shoulder, which hurt, and also set off a rattling cascade of what sounded like gravel, and what the hell was going on here?
When he opened his eyes, it occurred to him, in the instant between sitting up and letting out a profoundly unmanly squeak of horror, that probably he should have done so sooner, such as before making noise by shaking the rocks. Possibly on hearing the trickling water, for instance, which, all right, generally there wasn't running water in his own quarters when he wasn't in the act of showering, but a man could hope, right? There might have been someone showering in the next room. But the smell, that should have been an early giveaway, and honestly, gravel in his quarters was highly unlikely anyway, and certainly there were no decomposing corpses nor algae-slimed rocks nor sharp drops some ten inches from his sleeping position. He shifted again, uncomfortably aware that away from the edge was closer to the corpse, and really, ew, and how long had he been here, and actually, where was here?
And more importantly, where was his pack? And his ...everything else?
As he blinked and squinted and tried to find a power bar or, well, a canteen would be nice, or any sort of juice-heavy fruit, since obviously that water wasn't drinkable, not unless one had a burning desire for unknown gastrointestinal ruin, and okay, even a handful of crackers would have been something, but he didn't have anything at all, he tried to recall what he was doing here. He took as a given that dead-guy had been here longer than he had because even in this air, which probably more closely qualified as steam, that kind of decomp seemed improbable overnight, and also, he sort of remembered noticing the stench when he stopped here last night. Last night? Okay, so he'd come up here under his own power, that much he remembered, but he'd been exhausted, and not in the usual 'up for three days working out the formula on coffee and the annoyance of working with idiots' way, and it was making the details fuzzy. He recalled running, climbing up here from, from what? Through horrible wet foliage with clinging vines and--he shuddered--enormous probably-spiders with beady stalky eyes he'd avoided looking at too closely in the moonlight. And no one with him--no team, no weapons, well, all right, a knife, okay four knives, actually, tucked into weird little pockets in these pants, which, by the way chafed badly and clearly had been designed by a sadist on crack, but a knife, or four knives, didn't constitute a real weapon; it constituted an opportunity for adventures in unintended self-evisceration, and besides, he knew perfectly well he wasn't made for hand-to-hand combat. He was getting better, sure. Sheppard only usually had to rescue him a couple of times any given day, lately, and all right, given time to assess the terrain, he could arrange a tolerable ambush, especially given all these vines, but either way, a gun would have been a way better choice. But that was neither here nor there, and what he needed was something from which to create some sort of projectile or--
And what was that? He froze, straining to hear, aware of a new strain of rumble in amongst the sounds of running water and roughly seven hundred chirping, whirring, buzzing, dripping, flying, croaking, whickering, slithering varieties of wild creatures. Those were definitely voices. He gently patted his pockets, trying to remember the rules and find the knives because, all right, inadequate was certainly better than nonexistent, though honestly, would it have killed them to give him something to shoot with? But no. Anyway. Rules. Night time was safe, or so they'd said, though he wouldn’t have put it past them to play games with him about that, too, but assuming since he wasn't dead that that had been true, as soon as it was light, and it was probably, what, an hour or two after dawn? Yeah, they were looking for him. And he was supposed to already be running. Only, all right, apparently that climb up here where it had seemed at least marginally more safe than, say, remaining down there on the open bed of gravel, what with the cliff and all, had been even more outside his usual experience than he'd thought as he made it, because the only muscles in his body that weren't just on the edge of cramping were the ones in his face. Specifically, the smiling ones. The frowning ones were sore, too.
He wondered whether it would make more sense to just go ahead and jump back down. At least he'd be spared the whole life-sucking thing, which he'd heard was unpleasant, but then, with his luck, he'd probably get hung up in a vine, break both ankles, and then there would be the life-sucking anyway, with bonus ankle agony for his trouble.
He wondered how dead-guy had died. Or if there was anything useful on him, such as a gun. Or a slingshot. He glanced over and carefully rolled up onto his hands and knees, grimacing, then crawled the few feet for a closer, even more disgusting, look, which only demonstrated that he wasn't a forensic analyst because all he saw were worm-things and crawling-things and nothing that helped a bit.
The sounds--occasional low voices, and movement through foliage--were getting closer, coming up, and okay, he needed a plan.
He could throw dead-guy. Better chance of hitting them than he would have throwing knives, but it'd give away that he was up here, for sure.
He needed a better plan. Or any other plan, which would automatically be a better plan.
In the next fifteen seconds.
Crap. He circled around dead-guy and hoisted him. Sort of. His head stayed put, and one leg seemed like it might, too, but he was still something to throw, and maybe that would buy him another three minutes for Sheppard to come rescue him already, and also now that he had the body in his hands, he might as well use it as a weapon since at least he'd get some use out of having bright-green crawling things tracking dead-guy on his--well, not his; sadist designer's--jacket. He shuffled forward on the grassy strip, avoiding the gravel, and heaved.
Dead-guy crackled and crunched down through the greenery for several seconds, and the other noises stopped.
"McKay? That you?"
Rodney sat down with a thump, right on something squishy enough he didn't want to consider the options. "Sheppard?"
Sheppard's hair and eyes came up over the edge. "Hi. Nice welcome mat." He brushed bugs and debris out of his hair.
"What, you couldn’t have called out before you got up here and scared me half to death?" Rodney asked.
"Didn't expect you'd still be here." That was Ronon, swinging up over the edge as though it was as easy as hopping over the back of a couch to sit down, then offering a hand to Teyla behind him.
"Ronon located your starting point and calculated your likely rate of progress," she explained. "However, we had anticipated you would have made your way somewhat further, perhaps to the far side of the next ridge, in the time you had available. It seemed unwise to alert any Wraith who might be in the area when we didn't expect to be near you."
"Over the next--" Rodney stared. "Look, all right, you might have made it that far, but I--"
Ronon shook his head. "Took your abilities into account."
Rodney scowled, but before he could object further, Sheppard held up both hands. "Either way, we chose to come after you, once we'd taken care of the Wraith near your start point, who were, fortunately, busy bickering as to who was in charge of selecting worthwhile targets."
"Well it certainly wasn't me," Rodney said. "I could have told them, if they'd bothered to consult me. Though I suppose then they'd have just finished me off there and gone looking for a worthier one, so I suppose maybe I wouldn't, if I'd thought it through."
"Just as well we didn't try to guess where you'd end up, in any case." Sheppard shrugged and handed over his canteen, which had one of dead-guy's green bugs on the cap until he brushed it off, then jerked his head back toward the edge of the cliff. "Come on. We should get back before more Wraith show up."
Rodney unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then got to his feet, groaning, and took another long gulping drink before handing it back reluctantly. "I don't think I can get down. Getting up was--"
"You can," Ronon said. "Question is, how fast."
"What?"
Ronon arched an eyebrow. "Just step over the edge. You'll get down."
"Well yes, I meant, intact. Without anything broken. Obviously, gravity still works on this planet, since getting up here in the first place involved working against it, thanks."
"Have it your way." Ronon finished securing something to the gnarled trunk of the tree growing over the edge of the water and tugged, then handed a line to Rodney. Sheppard and Teyla had their own lines secure as well, and had already started down.
Rodney sighed and crawled backward the edge, then gingerly started to feel his way down.