Friendship: Safekeeping (2/2), by X-parrot
Title: Safekeeping (2/2)
Author: xparrot
Prompt: Slavery, captivity or hostages
Wordcount: ~18,000
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: "Don't worry, McKay," John said. "We'll keep you safe out there."
Part 1
* * *
Come daybreak, John's back ached, his limbs were stiff and cramped, and his eyes were gritty from too many hours awake. The rising sun piercing through the bars hurt.
Hours later, and his heart still felt too loud from that unnerving moment when Rodney's breathing had caught, rash creeping hot over his sallow skin again. John hadn't known for sure if it had been an actual secondary reaction, or if he'd just been paranoid, but he'd shaken Rodney awake none too gently, had forced another handful of antihistamine pills onto him. Better safe than sorry, anyway, and Rodney had offered panicky agreement before the new dose had knocked him out cold.
After a week, John was familiar with the slavers' schedule, and with the sun up he was expecting Teyla's knock warning of the guards coming. Breakfast, and then they'd be marched out to work in the ruins.
In the pastel morning sunlight, the looming guard was less threatening than he had been in torchlight, but John recognized the blunt features of their acquaintance, and his shorter comrade standing quietly behind him. The taller man shoved two trays of food through the bars, then stared at Rodney. "How is he?"
"Great," John said, "thanks for asking," and he drew back his lips in a vicious smirk, not moving a muscle. Sometime before sunrise, Rodney had slid down so that he all but had his head resting in John's lap. If anyone who mattered had been around, John would have woken him up to spare them both the embarrassment; but he wasn't about to interrupt Rodney's much-needed rest because a couple asshole slavers were gawking.
The wannabe Viking guard took out his stun-stick, slapped the heavy end into his palm. "He gonna do the work like you promised?"
"Yeah," John said, holding himself still, one arm under Rodney and long since gone numb, his other hand resting on Rodney's shoulder, keeping track of his working lungs. "He'll do it."
"Then he can come now," the guard said, "before you workers are gathered."
Wanting to make sure their fellows didn't notice the private commission, John guessed. He glared at the taller man, and the slaver stared back, smug and sure, enjoying John's impotence.
John prodded Rodney's shoulder. "Rise and shine. Room service's here."
"Huh? What?" Rodney snorted and started awake, began to sit up and rolled onto his back instead, groaning a pitifully small, "Ow."
"You okay?" John asked, shaking feeling back into his freed arm, his other hand still on Rodney's shoulder. After the night it was more instinct than conscious contact.
"I'm terrible," Rodney rasped. "I'm awake and not dead." He rubbed his face, keeping his eyes shut. "Ugh."
"Allergy aftereffects?"
"Antihistamine and epinephrine hangover. Also my back. Ouch." His face scrunched in a wince as he made to sit up again.
John gave him a hand, pushing him vertical. "On the bright side, you're breathing."
"There's that." Rodney's eyes were bloodshot when he finally pried them open, his hair a disastrous tangle, matted flat against his scalp, and his face pallid. "I'm debating whether it counts as a positive or a negative."
He should be in a bed in the infirmary, on more drugs and an IV drip, but he didn't even have the luxury of sleeping in here. "You up for breakfast?" John asked, aware of the watching guard's impatience, the smack of the stunner against his palm. That electric encouragement was the last thing Rodney needed at the moment.
"No," Rodney said, staying sitting up but shutting his eyes again. He concentrated for a moment, then mumbled, "Or, yeah, sure, what is there?"
"Let's see." John's own back was none too pleased with him as he stood, and the sleepless night provided a moment of dizziness as a reminder. "We've got gray gruel with white lumps, and white gruel with gray lumps."
"Please, sir, may I have some more?" Rodney muttered, a line they'd already used the second morning, but John wasn't going to call him on it, not until Rodney was a better color than the porridge. He shoved over the trays, and Rodney slowly picked up one of the bowls.
"Hurry up," the guard demanded, bashing his stun-stick against the bars, as his fellow glanced over his shoulder, watching for the other slavers.
Rodney almost dropped the bowl, watery gruel slopping over his hands. "It's okay," John told him, and glared at the guards. "Give him a moment, he's still sick."
"You said he could do it."
"I can fix whatever undoubtedly useless piece of equipment you give me," Rodney said, "provided you also supply the tools, and haven't managed to damage it beyond any chance of repair while using it as a birdbath or baseball bat or what-have-you."
"You know the deal?" John asked. He hadn't been sure Rodney had been paying attention at the time.
But Rodney nodded. "I was dying, not actually dead." He glanced up at John, said awkwardly, "Um, thanks. For getting the drugs and such."
John nodded, not really accepting the gratitude. He should have made a better bargain somehow. Rodney was wan enough to be gray beneath the sunburn, and his hands holding the porridge bowl were shaky with fine tremors. Whatever he said, he didn't look up to tying his shoelaces, much less tinkering with Ancient artifacts.
The guard didn't let him finish even half the bowl, before he clanged his stunner against the iron bars again and jammed his key in the padlock. "All right, that's it, get out here now."
"Yeah, hold on," John said, straightening up to face him. "We're coming."
The slaver shook his head. "Not you," he said. "Just him."
John glanced from the blond man to Rodney. "No way, you're getting both of us. He might need help-"
"He'll have to make do on his own," the guard said. "No one'll notice if he's not working," and he gestured disparagingly at Rodney, "but you're still needed excavating."
"Hey," Rodney protested weakly. "That's..."
"Now wait just a damn minute-" John began.
"Colonel, if I may suggest?" From the other side of the wagon, Teyla's voice carried clearly through the crisp morning air. "I could assist Dr. McKay, as that is my usual duty, is it not?"
John blinked, but Rodney caught on faster. "Right, yeah," he babbled, "Teyla's my, uh, my lab assistant, helps me all the time, can't fix a thing without her."
The guard eyed him. "So that's why you had a woman with your fighting unit, to serve this one?"
"Right, sure," John said. "Exploration and research-two scientists and two fighters to protect them, that's how we work."
The guard nodded. "Fine, then, we'll bring her along. Now get up."
John breathed an inaudible sigh of relief, reached down and pulled his teammate to his feet. Rodney staggered, leaned against John to steady himself. He looked like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to throw up or sit down.
"Just take it slow, and try not to piss them off too much," John told him in a low murmur. He slipped the other two epi-pens into Rodney's pockets. "You can do this."
"Yeah, right." Rodney's mouth twisted in a grimace, but he took the few tottering steps to the cage door on his own, clambered down from the wagon. The guard padlocked the door behind him, while his comrade held his stun-stick to McKay's back, though he didn't trigger it.
John watched Rodney make his way around the wagon, tripping when the guards shoved him faster, but he didn't fall. Through the wooden wall John heard Teyla and Ronon's cage open, and braced himself, fists clenched, ready if Teyla or Ronon made a move-but the camp was stirring, and there were other guards about. They wouldn't have gotten far, and didn't risk it.
He heard the murmur of Teyla's greeting and Rodney's response, took some small comfort in that, but then they were out of hearing range. He didn't even know where the slavers planned to take them.
"McKay looked like shit," Ronon said through the wall, all the frustration and anger boiling in John sounding in his teammate's growl.
"I know," John said.
"Living shit, though," Ronon said, and for now that would have to do.
* * *
The slavers, experienced in their business, never let their workers gather together to plot or riot. The press gangs changed daily, and during the midday lunch break they were discouraged from mingling, with stun-sticks if necessary. Most of the other slaves had shown no interest in talking with the newcomers, and today John didn't try to make conversation, cramming the thick, dry flatbread into his mouth as he kept an eye out for any of his team. He had crossed paths with Ronon while hauling out barrows of dirt from the caved-in passageway, but of Teyla and Rodney, he had seen no sign.
The guards didn't have guns or whips to crack, just the stunners, and looped cords hanging on their belts that were some sort of Pegasus bolas. They didn't need more. John had watched the slavers catch scurrying rabbit-like things with one throw of the bolas, and figured an bolting slave would be a slower, easier target to bring down. And anyone who had felt the zap of a stun-stick came quickly to attention when the guards shouted orders. Tired as he was, John jumped to his feet as fast as any of the slaves when the lunch break was over.
Ronon was still busy hauling buckets of junk up from the lower levels on creaking pulleys. John slowed down as he pushed past him, muttered, "You seen them?"
Ronon grunted, shook his head no. "Want to go find them?"
Hell yeah, John wanted to go-but there were three guards in sight. By John's count there were a dozen guards for the thirty-odd slaves, and at least two tended to be stationed near Ronon at any time; his strength was useful to them, but they weren't too arrogantly stupid to be careless.
And they didn't know where Teyla and Rodney were, how easy it would be to use them as hostages. "No, don't try anything yet," John whispered, and Ronon ducked his head in acknowledgement.
Come nightfall, they were lead back to the circus wagons, John bruised and limping from where a cart of moldy chunks of wall had slammed into his shin. He was shoved into his usual cage alone, but Ronon was wrestled in soon after.
John stared at him. "Not that it's not great to see you, buddy," he said, hoping he was managing a drawl, "but you got any idea where our usual roommates are at?"
The look Ronon gave him, plain even muted in twilight, said he wasn't buying it. "There's no one in the other cage yet," he pointed out.
John cocked an ear and listened through the wall. Ronon was right. The other workers had all been brought to the wagons, but maybe the guards were keeping Teyla and Rodney after school for extracurriculars. That, or they were just waiting until no one was watching to bring them back.
John's temples were pulsing with fatigue, and his leg ached; he could tell himself it was to keep it from stiffening that he paced the cage, eight strides that way and eight back again. Rodney had made snide cracks about black circus leopards and spots showing through John's hair, the first few nights; but Ronon didn't say anything. He watched, though, standing with his arms folded and his face set like stone, his eyes tracking John's useless progress across the floor. Fully upright, the top of Ronon's head almost hit the wagon's heavy ceiling beams; the cage wasn't made to hold the likes of him.
John had done thirteen circuits-not that he was counting-when the rough floorboards vibrated under his boots, with the clang of the other cage's door smashing shut. Muffled footsteps thudded behind the wooden wall, and John stopped, listened close. Ronon stood stock-still in attention.
The murmur of voices was too soft to identify, but the pitch was high; there was only one woman among the workers, and none among the guards. "Teyla?" John asked.
"It is us," Teyla answered immediately. "Rodney and I. You and Ronon?"
"Here," Ronon checked in, his stone face cracking open. "McKay's okay?"
"Not by any practical working definition." Rodney's rasp hardly carried through the wagon's walls, but John, standing close to the bars, could make him out, and exhaled his relief. A McKay who could bitch was doing all right.
"He did very well," Teyla said. "Better than could be expected of him."
"She means I didn't actually pass out or throw up on anyone," Rodney said.
"Far more than that," Teyla said, and then quieted as the guards came with dinner.
After they were finished eating-"You want my fruit, McKay?" Ronon offered, teeth bared in a grin Rodney would be able to hear, if not see; "Oh, clever, mock the immunologically impaired," Rodney returned through the wall, and the sarcasm cutting through his audible weariness made Ronon's grin broaden-and the guards had retired to their tents, out of hearing range, Teyla explained, "We were unable to reclaim the life signs detector from the guards. But what we were working on should prove even more useful."
"What I was working with," Rodney corrected.
"Yes, what you were, Rodney," Teyla answered that rote obnoxiousness good-naturedly, "and I am sure you would have easily lifted that fallen panel by yourself."
"Fine, we," Rodney returned. "These morons don't know what they've found, obviously, we knew that already. So they didn't think much of locking us in a chamber, giving me a pile of stuff to try to fix, and leaving us alone for a while. Long enough for me to access some of the outpost's systems-they've destroyed enough consoles that most of the research database is gone, but Ancient systems are so redundant that the backups are still-" He broke off in a coughing, sneezing fit violent enough to be audible on their side of the wagon.
"Rodney?" John asked, hand pressed to the wooden wall in lieu of smashing his fist there in a futile effort to break through. He could make out Teyla's murmur, knew she'd be doing what she could, and Rodney ought to still have the other two epi-pens on him-but he was the team leader and he should be over there, damn it.
"...Fine," Rodney got out when he was done sneezing, to Teyla or to all of them. "I'm fine, it's not an asthma attack. I'm just hypersensitive now to the damn dust, or pollen, or stupidity-"
"You're always allergic to that," John pointed out. "How many times have you accused other scientists' theories of giving you hives?"
"As I was saying," Rodney said, sounding put upon, as if John were more bothersome than his haywire immune responses, "most of the major systems of the outpost are still intact. The doors, the lights, the ventilation."
"You've got access to all that?" John asked.
"To make sure we couldn't crawl out through a hole in the wall, they put us into one of the more intact chambers," Rodney said. "That is, the best shielded ones in the complex-which happen to be the main control rooms. We're being held by imbeciles."
"Lucky for us," John said. "So you can arrange a distraction for us to escape?"
"That is the idea," Teyla said. "There is this, too. If you would put out your hand, John."
John snaked his hand through the iron bars, fingers open, and grabbed hold of what brushed against them. "Got it." He examined the palm-sized, flat piece of cero-metallic paneling, one of the many fragments littering the outpost's half-buried corridors. It was scratched with tiny chalk markings, and he tilted it into the moonlight as Ronon leaned in to see: Stargate symbols, a gate address.
"That's this world," Rodney said, "one of the few things I did get out of the database. At least we know where we are now-maybe after we get away we can send a mission back, before they've destroyed everything here."
"Right," John said, burning the symbols into his memory with the ease of practice. Ronon, having grown up with basic Stargate mnemonics, was even faster; by the time John had finished he was already looking away. The bit of paneling was too hard to break without tools, but John scrubbed off the chalk with his sleeve and threw it away, through the bars. The guards wouldn't notice just another piece scattered on the ground.
"So what's the plan?" John asked. "When will you be ready to set off the distraction?"
"Tomorrow, a half hour into the lunch break," Rodney said. "Make sure you're outside the complex."
His voice was still hoarse and shaky, and John frowned. "You sure you'll be up for this? We could wait another day-"
"Can't," Rodney said. "I fixed a few of their more useless gadgets, but these morons are impatient. They want weapons, they won't let me keep working on harmless stuff for long. I'm with Teyla, I'll manage. You and Ronon just be ready."
"We will be," Ronon said, grinning dangerously.
"All right," John conceded. "We meet at the clearing with the abandoned shaft, make the run to the Stargate together. Got it?" He waited for Teyla and Rodney's agreement, then said, "Let's get some sleep now. Busy day tomorrow."
He waited, listening through the quiet night, until he thought he heard Rodney's soft snores, then asked, "Teyla?"
"I am awake," she replied. "'Rodney is sleeping soundly."
"How's he doing, really?"
Teyla only hesitated a moment. "Well enough," she said, "though he tired easily. I do not think he could have managed more strenuous labor than these repair tasks. But he did not suffer another attack."
"What about tomorrow? Is he going to be in any shape to run for it?"
Teyla paused again. "As he said, he must be," she said finally. "We have little choice. Rodney knows this."
"It's not like we're going to escape without him," John said.
"Rodney knows this, too," Teyla replied. "Be assured, John, I will guard him."
"Yeah, I know."
"It would do little good to tell you not to worry, would it," Teyla said with teasing asperity.
"Probably not," John admitted. "Team leader and all-it's part of my job description."
"Then I will only tell you to sleep, so you may have the energy to worry more."
John chuckled, probably too softly for Teyla to hear. "Right."
Ronon was already stretched out on the other pallet, though his eyes were open, glittering darkly in the moonlight. "Tomorrow we're getting out of here," he told John, determinedly triumphant, like they were already gone and safe. "All of us." He stretched out, boot soles jarring the iron bars. "Be good to be sleeping on a bed again."
Couldn't argue with that. "Rodney said the same thing every night. Only louder and more times."
Ronon's teeth gleamed as he grinned. "McKay's smarter than he looks, sometimes."
"This plan of his better work."
Ronon shrugged. "They usually do." He rolled onto his side to face John. "We get back, the docs will stick him in a hospital bed, instead of that stupid mattress he's so proud of. He'll whine about that. But he's going to be okay."
It was a statement, not a question, but John answered it anyway. "Yeah."
* * *
Hard at work the next morning, John didn't cross Ronon's path, or catch a glimpse of Rodney or Teyla. At the lunch break, while most of the slaves sat to eat, resting while they could, John made like he was seeking out shade, strolling under the overhanging forest branches as he counted the minutes by.
Looking back at the half-buried outpost, he surreptitiously located the guards-three visible at the perimeter; and probably five more just out of sight. The three he could see were watching him back, alert but at ease. The forest's edge was sparse, the saplings too narrow to hide behind; they weren't expecting him to be stupid enough to make a run for it.
They weren't expecting the ground to start moving, either. Neither was John, for that matter. He was ready for a light show from the Ancient structure, alarms going off, maybe some doors closing. But the flashing lights, and the deafening wail shrieking from the very walls, were nothing to the quaking of the earth under their feet, the solid ground rocking like a table with uneven legs.
One of the guards actually fell over; John didn't take time to enjoy that, because he was already booking it for the forest, grinning as he ran. Good show, McKay. Really going above and beyond-not that he'd expected anything less.
He made it pretty far before he heard shouting, and a whizzing whir and thud of one of the guard's bolas hitting a tree-but all of that was behind him and that was all that mattered. Then he plowed into the underbrush of the deeper forest, crashing through giant shoulder-high ferns that could've fit on the set for Jurassic Park.
No one was following him, as far as he could hear-they had bigger things to worry about. John doubled back and headed for the clearing. An auxiliary to the primary facility, Rodney had guessed; the slaves had been working it their first day here, but then it had been abandoned for the more easily accessed main tunnels, the wagons and slavers' tents picked up and moved. The ground was still rutted and pocked from the wheels of the heavy iron and wooden prisons.
Ronon was already waiting for him, crouched among the long grasses. Keeping low himself as he caught his breath, John didn't see him until Ronon poked his shoulder. John whirled to attack with a blow that the big guy didn't even bother ducking, just blocked with a sweep of his arm.
"You found the place," his teammate said, not much over a whisper.
"Yeah," John replied, keeping his voice also low and his irritation mostly out of it. It wasn't like a clearing this big would be that easy to miss, even on the ground. "Were we followed?"
"Don't think so, don't hear any guards." Ronon shook his head. "Don't hear Teyla or McKay, either."
"Give them time, we don't know where they were when it went off."
"You see it?" Ronon asked, looking amused. "The way the place was shaking?"
"I saw the ground move. Was it the whole structure?"
"Like Atlantis when it flies," Ronon confirmed. "Good thing most of the workers were sitting down. Couple of the guards got knocked around."
By his smirk, John guessed they had had help going down. But Ronon knew when to go for vengeance, and when to run for it. Revenge could wait; escape was their priority.
The sunlight streamed through the forest's dark green-blue leaves, golden beams strained to cooler tones. Midday was hot, sweat tricking down the back of John's neck, and the buzz of alien insects swelled and fell again around them, not interrupted by anyone's approach. Rodney wouldn't have set off his distraction until he and Teyla were properly positioned, just give them the chance to show...
John didn't count the seconds to know it had been too long; his gut told him. "They're not coming."
Ronon didn't question it; Ronon rarely did. He didn't ask if John thought their teammates had been recaptured, just said, "So we go back?"
"I'm going back," John said. "You go on to the Stargate."
Ronon's frown was thunderous, but John shook his head firmly. "It's a good half mile from here, and you're faster. And you've got the best chance of making it through whatever guard they have on it."
"Two of us would have a better chance," Ronon said.
"Can't risk it, we don't know what's happened to Teyla and McKay. If they're in trouble-"
"You don't have a weapon."
"Neither do you," John pointed out. "And I know you're dying to get your blaster back from these slaver bastards, but that'll be easier to reclaim when you've got a P-90 and a jumper at your back-and the longer we stand here talking, the more they could be doing to Teyla and Rodney, so go!"
Ronon didn't nod, just reached behind his back and pulled out a knife. He handed the blade to John, then turned and plunged into the forest without so much as a, "Good luck."
Gripping the knife's leather-wrapped hilt, John took off in the opposite direction, back toward the outpost and his two tardy teammates.
* * *
His legs were burning by the time he made it back to the slave camp. Getting old, John-only a week without his regular jog, and look at him puffing for breath.
Then he lost track of those inconsequential aches, as through the trees he saw the camp. The slavers had called it a day early: all the slaves had been returned to the cages, locked inside; and the dozen or so guards were gathered in the space between the wagons and their tents. And in the middle of that group-
Teyla was on the ground, facedown with her auburn hair spread over the dirt, but she was moving, at least. Rodney was kneeling on the ground behind her, and one of the guards stood over him, back to John, with his dirty blond queue hanging down the length of his spine under his grimy leather coat.
He had his stun-stick out, was holding it to the side of Rodney's head, and Rodney's mouth was open like he was screaming, but he wasn't making any sound that John could hear.
If John had taken a moment to think, he probably could have come up with a better plan than bellowing, "Stop it!" and charging forward with Ronon's knife in his hand.
But then, if he had taken a moment to think, the slaver would've kept the stunner to Rodney's temple for that much longer.
As it was, when the other guards had grabbed John, ripping his knife away, and dropped him into the dust beside his teammates, Rodney was lying on his back, his eyes open but unaware, staring up at the sky as he panted in almost inaudibly shallow breaths.
"Rodney?" John said, reaching toward him. The guards had applied their stun-sticks to loosen his grip on the knife, and his arms were trembling from the aftermath, like the quivers of muscle fatigue after benching over his max. "Come on, buddy, look at me-"
Teyla was awake, but her legs were tangled in two pairs of the guards' bolas; every time she twitched there was a crackle and flash like the charge of the stun-sticks, and she would shudder. "John," she gasped, trying to crawl closer anyway, "I had hoped you were able to escape-"
John shook his head at her, silent command to lie still and not get zapped. He was dizzy himself from the partial stunning, and one of the slavers had clouted him across the head hard enough that he was tasting blood. And Rodney hadn't moved, body rigid, and his wrist was cold when John put his fingers to the pulse point. Going into shock-the anaphylaxis without the proper chance to recover had put him to his limit; now he'd been pushed past it.
The guard standing over them was shouting, "-have to show all you workers how pointless it is to try to escape!" John squinted up into the sun at the man, recognizing the blunt, twisted features of their erstwhile ally.
The slaver sneered down at John. He looked a little put out to have had his trust betrayed. "What, you weren't expecting an escape attempt?" John asked him. "You must be new to the slave-keeping gig, huh-"
He was ready for the backhand, let his head turn with it to dispel the worst force of the blow, though it opened his split lip again, blood tangy on his tongue.
"Now that you've been recaptured," the guard said loudly, towering over John and blocking out the blinding sunlight, "you'll also make a lesson for the others." He gestured at the surrounding cages, positioned so that all of the slaves could see their spectacle. Most of them were watching, some eagerly, grinning in anticipation like this was the best entertainment they'd had in a while; though a few had turned away.
The guard didn't look like he particularly cared one way or another; more into giving the object lesson than actually educating. "Once your friend and his woman have taken their punishment, you'll get what's coming to you," he told John, then crouched to grab Rodney by the collar, hauled him up to his knees again.
Rodney didn't resist, head not lolling back for all the unconscious blankness of his stare-his muscles locked tense, stiff as an unjointed action figure, rigor mortis in a living body. "This is what happens to those stupid enough to try to run," the guard said, projecting to be heard by the watching slaves, and he was smirking as he brought up his stun-stick again.
Teyla cried out in powerless protest. "Wait!" John shouted, pushing himself up, but he didn't make it to his feet before two other guards grabbed him from behind and wrestled him to a standstill. They were bigger than him and their hands were like manacles around his biceps, but he fought back. "You can't-" Rodney still wasn't moving, and his hands at his sides were curled into claws, like he was still in the grip of the stun.
"Maybe we should hold off," one of the guards holding John said, though he didn't relax his grip any. The glimpse of his profile was enough for John to identify the big guard's crony, the other one in on the deal, the man who had brought the medicines the night before last, just in time. "He's no good to us if he dies..."
"This sumpter's no good to us anyway," the taller guard snapped. "He's too weak for real labor, and look what happened when we showed mercy, gave him easier work. They're playing us for fools-"
John's bark of laughter was painfully forced, but it got the slaver's attention away from Rodney. "We don't have to play you for that, you do fine on your own," he said, staring the man in the eye and making his smirk as insulting as possible. "Hell, you wouldn't even have caught me now if I hadn't come back." He widened the smirk. "And showing mercy, is that what you're calling it-I thought you were trying to make some extra cash behind your buddies' backs, or should I not be mentioning our deal-"
"Shut up!" The guard's face went red, all but frothing at the mouth. He threw Rodney down and stalked toward John, stun-stick raised.
Rodney made a faint groan as he crumpled to the ground, and that proof of life was enough that John's smile became real, for the split second before the guard's stun-stick touched his temple.
There was the crack of a released charge, and the world whited out in a pain so total it was annihilating. John couldn't tell where it hurt, couldn't tell what was hurting, whether he still had a body to be hurt. He'd felt the stun-sticks before, several times daily, and just a few minutes ago; but this was a whole other realm, the difference between a paper cut and a severed limb.
When it stopped, it took him a couple moments to realize it was over, another few moments to remember where he was, to become aware of himself again, of his body juddering from the shock like he was seizing, of the ground and grass crushed under him. To hear the shouts and stuttering retorts of gunfire-
But the slavers didn't use guns. John blinked-his eyes were already open, he realized-heaved a breath and rolled onto his side to lever himself up to his knees.
"John?" Teyla had dragged herself to his side to touch his arm, sweat beaded on her forehead and her complexion gray under the warm bronze. The bolas wrapped around her legs were still shocking her whenever she moved to free herself. But her lips were pulled into a tight, grimacing smile. "I believe Ronon's escape was as successful as ours was not."
P-90 fire was still strafing overhead, and the jumper's engines whistled as it soared by. Some of the slavers were standing their ground, but most had scattered into the woods, or were crouched with their hands over their heads.
"Rodney?" John demanded, looking around.
"Yeah?" Rodney said from John's other side, on hands and knees and his face the color of milk gone off, but his eyes were focusing, more or less.
Just past him, hunkered low on the ground, was the guard who had brought the drugs, who had hesitantly spoken up to his buddy against zapping Rodney again. He had his stun-stick in his hand and was looking at Rodney, and John could see the wheels in his head turning, considering what their rescuers would do in a hostage situation.
John met the man's eyes, shook his head. "Don't," he suggested. "Get out of here. Our people aren't here for revenge. Just us."
The slaver stared at him, then glanced at Rodney. Then back at John, taking in his shaky arms, his dizzy wavering, even sitting down.
The look in his eyes, Touch him and I'll kill you: not a threat, only a fact.
Slipping his stun-stick back in his belt, the guard peered over his shoulder at the advancing Marines, then pushed to his feet and took off for the forest, leaving them behind.
John reached for Teyla's legs. His hands were trembling, but he managed to unwind one of the entangled bolas and started on the other, muttering swears as she hissed with every shock.
Rodney blinked at them, then twisted his head toward the people approaching. John followed his gaze. With the sun at their backs it was hard to make out their faces, but a silhouette that tall could only be Ronon, and John raised a hand in an about-time-you-guys-showed-up wave.
"We're getting rescued?" Rodney asked, weary and confused, like he couldn't trust his eyes.
"Yeah, buddy," John told him, reaching over to tap his shoulder, assure him he was awake and not hallucinating. "Unless you'd like to stick around, get some exercise in, sample more of the local fruit-"
Teyla smacked him on the arm, none too gently but it was worth it for Rodney's aggravated, amused snort.
* * *
True to Ronon's prediction, McKay spent the night in the infirmary, getting his blood sugar balanced and his vitals monitored. Though he didn't whine about it, instead was atypically subdued; but after the last few days John figured he was ready for a rest. Ronon brought an extra tray down from the commissary for him, and John set up his laptop on the end of the bed, and the four of them got most of the way through the X-men movies before the medical staff chased them out for the night.
Two days later, when they were organizing the expedition back to M5Y-349, Rodney declined to accompany the team. Since he was still looking a little peaked, and had only been cleared for light duty, John cut him some slack and let him skip the mission.
The planet was pretty much as they had left it, warm yellow sun shining over the green forest and fields. The charred husks of the prison wagons were cold ash, no longer smoldering. After they had released the slaves, John had taken out the wagons with a couple jumper drones-overkill, maybe, but it had felt damn good. The slaves had dialed out, to wherever they liked; those who didn't have a home to return to had been taken to the Alpha site, to relocate with the Athosians or make their own plans.
The slavers had mostly fled in the forest; those who the Atlantis soldiers had captured had been let go anyway. There wasn't any Pegasus tribunal to hold them accountable for their crimes, no code of justice to try them by.
Ronon had suggested execution, not a joke and not even that angrily; matter-of-fact in a way that had shaken John. More than anything because he considered it, could have done it. Lorne and the Marines would have looked the other way, if they wouldn't help-and they might have, after over a week of frustrated searches.
But Rodney, huddled on the back bench of the jumper wrapped in a blanket, had mumbled, "Are you nuts, we can't do that."
And of course they couldn't. Except that John, gripping a P-90 in his hands, remembering that terrible whistling, wheezing sound Rodney had made struggling to breathe; and Rodney's eyes, glazed and blank with agony-John could have done it then, and he went cold later, thinking about it.
Instead they'd let their captors turned captives go, warned them not to come back, and had contented themselves with destroying the tools of their slave trade. John had assigned a couple Marines in a jumper to keep watch on the ruins of the Ancient outpost, told them to ignore anyone leaving through the Stargate, and then returned with his team to Atlantis.
Coming back now, walking through the gate in a clean uniform with the comfortable weight of his P-90 hanging from his vest, felt like a mission to a new world; even the burnt-out wagons might have been the debris of an unknown people. Zelenka and the other four scientists Rodney had selected were ecstatic, scurrying about the ruins of the outpost like kids on Christmas morning, poking at this and that. John sat on a stump beside the entrance of the main tunnel where he'd hauled rocks for a week, gun resting casually in the crook of his elbow as he watched the scientists work from behind his sunglasses.
"Feels weird," Ronon remarked, leaning on a nearby tree with his arms folded, his blaster in hand. He had retrieved it from the guards' tents before they had left the planet, and hadn't let go of it since, that John had noticed. Even on Atlantis he'd been keeping a couple fingers on the grip when he had it holstered.
"Being back here? Yeah," John agreed. He tilted his head back so the sunlight fell warm on his face. "Kind of nice, though, when we don't have to do anything. The weather's great."
"Rodney ought to have come with us," Teyla said.
"You know how McKay feels about sunlight and fresh air."
"Yes," Teyla said, "but after all the objections he made to the work we were forced to do, I would have thought he would want to oversee the exploration."
John shrugged. Rodney could have used the sun-he was looking pale now that the sunburn had faded, and still tired; he'd been retiring from the labs before midnight every night. But John hadn't been all that eager to come back himself, however pleasant it might be sitting in the sun now; he could understand Rodney's reluctance to revisit the place where he'd stopped breathing, not to mention the whole slave labor deal. "This place has been around for ten thousand years, we can come back when he's ready."
Besides, it wasn't as if McKay were staying uninvolved; John had caught him giving Zelenka a laundry list three pages long of things to check out. And when they got back to Atlantis, Rodney descended on all of them, badgering them with questions about the condition of the ruins, and sweeping up the various artifacts his people had collected like some kind of deranged device vacuum cleaner, rushing everything back to his lab for examination with better equipment than sticks and rocks.
He was so excited by the trove of collected gadgets that John assumed he was regretting not going personally after all, and started planning a second trip to M5Y-349, after their upcoming missions were completed.
So he was surprised to get an entirely different email from Dr. McKay the next afternoon. Rather than reply to it, John saved himself some typos and went down to the lab to ask in person. "What do you mean, you aren't available for tomorrow's mission?"
Rodney, busy at two laptops with three esoteric, scratched and dusty devices on the counter before him, wouldn't look him in the eye. That wasn't unexpected; he wouldn't have resorted to sending an email if this were anything he wanted to get confrontational about. Which set off most of John's warning bells, because Rodney rarely backed down from confrontation.
He wasn't prepared for the answer, however. "Not just tomorrow's mission," Rodney said. "I thought my message made that clear."
"'For an indefinite period of time' makes zilch clear," John said. "What happened, weren't you cleared for active duty this morning?"
Rodney shook his head. "Technically, yes, but." He stopped typing, folded his arms and exhaled. "You'll be getting the notice tomorrow. I'm officially removing myself from the off-world team roster."
The words hung in silence for a moment. Eventually John realized the punch-line he was waiting for wasn't coming. "What?"
"If you want another scientist on your team," Rodney said, "I can prepare a few recommendations; Zelenka's an obvious candidate, but there are a couple other engineers and physicists with off-world experience. Or else there are several Air Force and Marines officers with fairly extensive backgrounds in science; the SGC tends to recruit-"
"Wait, what?" John said again. "You're not serious-"
"I'll have the paperwork ready tomorrow, but I wanted to give you a heads' up about the mission, in case you want a fourth for it. It sounds like a cakewalk, but-"
"Rodney, what the hell?"
Rodney set his jaw, still not looking at John. "Recent events have forced me to realize that I am unsuitable for regular off-world travel."
"You've been going through the gate for years," John said. "Now one mission goes sour, and you're going to quit?" He might have laughed, if he wasn't wondering if he should be calling the infirmary. Or else having Lorne check for pod people growing in the lower levels. "Not even the worst mission we've had-hell, it wasn't the worst we've had this year." Okay, the brush with death was closer than he preferred, but they'd come closer. "You weren't even in the infirmary for twenty-four hours."
"You know, it wasn't as bad as I remembered," Rodney remarked, contemplatively. "The anaphylaxis. I mean, it was horrible, definitely not my chosen way to go-peacefully in my sleep at a hundred and twelve-but there's worse. I've faced worse, in the last few years, and I think overall I prefer suffocation to, say, being burned alive."
There was a knot like a ball of ice in the pit of John's stomach. "Look, I know it was rough, but if you don't think you can handle off-world-"
"It's not that," Rodney said, irritated. "I came to terms with my mortality when I started going through the Stargate."
John arched an eyebrow. "Really, now."
"Well, no, not at all, but I've been indoctrinated into the reckless mindset of you adrenaline junky types, such that when necessary I can willfully forget we're a hair's breadth from certain death. So, close enough." Rodney shrugged. "This has nothing to do with me; it's about you. All of you. The team."
"What about us?" John asked, and the cold sick knot in his belly burst; he was so angry he could taste bile. "You don't think we did everything we could? Ronon carried the epi-pen, Teyla-"
"I am painfully aware of what they did-of what you all did," Rodney said over him. He spun his chair around, finally looked at John directly. "I told Teyla to go-I told her to get the hell out of there, when I knew I couldn't make it. The guards were occupied, the way was clear, she could've made it. But she wouldn't leave me behind, and I couldn't keep up, even with her help, I couldn't go fast enough."
"It wasn't your fault," John said. "All the dust and crap in the air, your allergies were reacting to it worse than usual. According to the doctors it's lucky you didn't go full-blown biphasic again."
"And Teyla risked her life, on my sorry luck. Had to risk it, because that's the way we work, we don't leave anyone behind. And you, you came back, for both of us-and that's why."
Rodney faced him, back drawn up straight and rounded shoulders braced. "When you first came to me, told me I would be on your team, and I told you it would be too risky-I wasn't considering the real risk. I didn't properly realize how great a liability my health could be. Not to myself, that I got just fine-but to the people I work with, to our mission. I didn't calculate what the hazard would be to you, keeping me safe."
"The hazard."
"I've got conditions that could potentially kill me. Citrus, bees, the hypoglycemia, I've lived with that all my life. But that they could get other people killed-that I could kill my..." Rodney shook his head hard. "It's not like I didn't know my weaknesses. I'm not a soldier, I've never wanted to be one, but I've done what I could. I've gone to the shooting range, I've let Ronon abuse me in the name of self-defense training. But this-there's nothing I can do about this. I tasted the wrong damn fruit-fruit, for god's sake, how absurd is that?-and all of you paid for it."
"And now you want off the team," John said.
"I don't want-" Rodney started, a knee-jerk reaction that he clamped his mouth down on a second late. "It's the right decision for all concerned," he said tightly instead, his hands balling into fists at his sides. "The risk to you-"
"Yeah," John said, "and what about the risk to us when we don't have you there? Other scientists, sure-who don't think as fast, who shut down when they panic instead of getting better. Who aren't used to working with us and can't do what you do. Damn it, McKay, how the hell would we have gotten away from those slavers, if we hadn't had you to engineer that earthquake?"
"It wasn't an earthquake," Rodney muttered, "just a mass displacement engine applied to-"
"It was a piece of ten thousand year old tech that you got working, right under those bastards' noses, with no tools and no time," John said. "You give me another one of your scientists who you can guarantee can pull off what you do, as fast as you do it-and when they're half-dead-and I'll consider letting you off the team. Until then-I told you way back when, I need the best. That hasn't changed."
Appealing to the McKay ego was always a delicate game-don't want to overfeed that beast. But Rodney wasn't the same man he'd cajoled onto his team a lifetime ago. The stubborn squaring of his jaw was the same, but the look in his eyes was that much older, the eyes of someone who'd seen that much more, who understood what he hadn't before. "The best of what?" Rodney asked quietly. "The smartest man on Atlantis isn't the best for your team, if he's not smart enough to avoid the lethal fruit cup."
"If I'd tasted it first, I could've warned you to avoid it."
"It wasn't your responsibility. My allergies, my job to look out for them."
"And my job to look out for you," John said. "You're not the only one with weaknesses. Teyla's got the Wraith-gene thing, that's damn useful but it's caused its share of problems, too. Ronon's past got you an arrow in the ass."
"And you attract any passing Ascended floozie," Rodney sniped, "but that's-"
"The same thing, pretty much," John cut him off. "Well, not the floozies-but we've all got our kryptonite. Hell, it's not like allergies are unique to you; epi-pens are included in the standard SGC gear for a reason. We're in an alien galaxy, there's plenty of dangers to watch out for. And plenty of dangers that we need that brain of yours to save us from." He pointed at Rodney's forehead with one finger. "We keep you safe out there, and you keep us safe. That's how the team works. That's how we're going to keep working."
Rodney was sitting very still, even his hands quiescent for once, resting on his knees. As stiff as when he'd been hit with the slavers' stun, and John felt as paralyzed. His choice, ultimately; Rodney wasn't military, John couldn't pull rank on him, couldn't do anything but choose a replacement, should Atlantis's head of science request removal from off-world missions.
He could understand what it had been like for Rodney, throat closed up and unable to breathe, his heart pounding too loudly in his ears.
Rodney's lopsided, quicksilver grin, there and gone again, was like a jolt of epinephrine, a surge of returned strength. "Through sickness and in health?"
John grinned back. "'Til death by Wraith, Replicator, or lemon. Whichever comes last."
Rodney narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "If we're going to make this official, you better be ready to wear the other dress, with Teyla. I can't pull off white, and I don't think veils will work with Ronon's hair, even if you could find a gown his size."
"...I don't want to know how your brain works, McKay."
"So." Rodney cleared his throat. "Mission briefing's at 1100 tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Got time for chess now?"
Rodney waved absently. "Later, I've got two crates of unsorted artifacts to go through, and I'm hoping those blond Neanderthals didn't get to all of them."
"I was calling them Vikings myself," John remarked. "Have fun with your doohickeys, then, see you at lunch."
"Right, yeah." Rodney had already turned back to his laptops, prodding the rusty gadget with prongs like doubled tuning forks.
John was at the door when Rodney said, "Hey. Sheppard."
"Yeah?"
Rodney didn't look up, busy with his devices. "Before I forget to say it. Thank you."
For saving his life; for keeping him on his team; for asking him to be on the team to begin with. Rodney didn't say and John didn't ask. It didn't matter; his answer would be the same regardless. "Anytime," John said, and went to make sure lemon meringue wasn't on the commissary's dessert menu today.
the end
Author: xparrot
Prompt: Slavery, captivity or hostages
Wordcount: ~18,000
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: "Don't worry, McKay," John said. "We'll keep you safe out there."
Part 1
* * *
Come daybreak, John's back ached, his limbs were stiff and cramped, and his eyes were gritty from too many hours awake. The rising sun piercing through the bars hurt.
Hours later, and his heart still felt too loud from that unnerving moment when Rodney's breathing had caught, rash creeping hot over his sallow skin again. John hadn't known for sure if it had been an actual secondary reaction, or if he'd just been paranoid, but he'd shaken Rodney awake none too gently, had forced another handful of antihistamine pills onto him. Better safe than sorry, anyway, and Rodney had offered panicky agreement before the new dose had knocked him out cold.
After a week, John was familiar with the slavers' schedule, and with the sun up he was expecting Teyla's knock warning of the guards coming. Breakfast, and then they'd be marched out to work in the ruins.
In the pastel morning sunlight, the looming guard was less threatening than he had been in torchlight, but John recognized the blunt features of their acquaintance, and his shorter comrade standing quietly behind him. The taller man shoved two trays of food through the bars, then stared at Rodney. "How is he?"
"Great," John said, "thanks for asking," and he drew back his lips in a vicious smirk, not moving a muscle. Sometime before sunrise, Rodney had slid down so that he all but had his head resting in John's lap. If anyone who mattered had been around, John would have woken him up to spare them both the embarrassment; but he wasn't about to interrupt Rodney's much-needed rest because a couple asshole slavers were gawking.
The wannabe Viking guard took out his stun-stick, slapped the heavy end into his palm. "He gonna do the work like you promised?"
"Yeah," John said, holding himself still, one arm under Rodney and long since gone numb, his other hand resting on Rodney's shoulder, keeping track of his working lungs. "He'll do it."
"Then he can come now," the guard said, "before you workers are gathered."
Wanting to make sure their fellows didn't notice the private commission, John guessed. He glared at the taller man, and the slaver stared back, smug and sure, enjoying John's impotence.
John prodded Rodney's shoulder. "Rise and shine. Room service's here."
"Huh? What?" Rodney snorted and started awake, began to sit up and rolled onto his back instead, groaning a pitifully small, "Ow."
"You okay?" John asked, shaking feeling back into his freed arm, his other hand still on Rodney's shoulder. After the night it was more instinct than conscious contact.
"I'm terrible," Rodney rasped. "I'm awake and not dead." He rubbed his face, keeping his eyes shut. "Ugh."
"Allergy aftereffects?"
"Antihistamine and epinephrine hangover. Also my back. Ouch." His face scrunched in a wince as he made to sit up again.
John gave him a hand, pushing him vertical. "On the bright side, you're breathing."
"There's that." Rodney's eyes were bloodshot when he finally pried them open, his hair a disastrous tangle, matted flat against his scalp, and his face pallid. "I'm debating whether it counts as a positive or a negative."
He should be in a bed in the infirmary, on more drugs and an IV drip, but he didn't even have the luxury of sleeping in here. "You up for breakfast?" John asked, aware of the watching guard's impatience, the smack of the stunner against his palm. That electric encouragement was the last thing Rodney needed at the moment.
"No," Rodney said, staying sitting up but shutting his eyes again. He concentrated for a moment, then mumbled, "Or, yeah, sure, what is there?"
"Let's see." John's own back was none too pleased with him as he stood, and the sleepless night provided a moment of dizziness as a reminder. "We've got gray gruel with white lumps, and white gruel with gray lumps."
"Please, sir, may I have some more?" Rodney muttered, a line they'd already used the second morning, but John wasn't going to call him on it, not until Rodney was a better color than the porridge. He shoved over the trays, and Rodney slowly picked up one of the bowls.
"Hurry up," the guard demanded, bashing his stun-stick against the bars, as his fellow glanced over his shoulder, watching for the other slavers.
Rodney almost dropped the bowl, watery gruel slopping over his hands. "It's okay," John told him, and glared at the guards. "Give him a moment, he's still sick."
"You said he could do it."
"I can fix whatever undoubtedly useless piece of equipment you give me," Rodney said, "provided you also supply the tools, and haven't managed to damage it beyond any chance of repair while using it as a birdbath or baseball bat or what-have-you."
"You know the deal?" John asked. He hadn't been sure Rodney had been paying attention at the time.
But Rodney nodded. "I was dying, not actually dead." He glanced up at John, said awkwardly, "Um, thanks. For getting the drugs and such."
John nodded, not really accepting the gratitude. He should have made a better bargain somehow. Rodney was wan enough to be gray beneath the sunburn, and his hands holding the porridge bowl were shaky with fine tremors. Whatever he said, he didn't look up to tying his shoelaces, much less tinkering with Ancient artifacts.
The guard didn't let him finish even half the bowl, before he clanged his stunner against the iron bars again and jammed his key in the padlock. "All right, that's it, get out here now."
"Yeah, hold on," John said, straightening up to face him. "We're coming."
The slaver shook his head. "Not you," he said. "Just him."
John glanced from the blond man to Rodney. "No way, you're getting both of us. He might need help-"
"He'll have to make do on his own," the guard said. "No one'll notice if he's not working," and he gestured disparagingly at Rodney, "but you're still needed excavating."
"Hey," Rodney protested weakly. "That's..."
"Now wait just a damn minute-" John began.
"Colonel, if I may suggest?" From the other side of the wagon, Teyla's voice carried clearly through the crisp morning air. "I could assist Dr. McKay, as that is my usual duty, is it not?"
John blinked, but Rodney caught on faster. "Right, yeah," he babbled, "Teyla's my, uh, my lab assistant, helps me all the time, can't fix a thing without her."
The guard eyed him. "So that's why you had a woman with your fighting unit, to serve this one?"
"Right, sure," John said. "Exploration and research-two scientists and two fighters to protect them, that's how we work."
The guard nodded. "Fine, then, we'll bring her along. Now get up."
John breathed an inaudible sigh of relief, reached down and pulled his teammate to his feet. Rodney staggered, leaned against John to steady himself. He looked like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to throw up or sit down.
"Just take it slow, and try not to piss them off too much," John told him in a low murmur. He slipped the other two epi-pens into Rodney's pockets. "You can do this."
"Yeah, right." Rodney's mouth twisted in a grimace, but he took the few tottering steps to the cage door on his own, clambered down from the wagon. The guard padlocked the door behind him, while his comrade held his stun-stick to McKay's back, though he didn't trigger it.
John watched Rodney make his way around the wagon, tripping when the guards shoved him faster, but he didn't fall. Through the wooden wall John heard Teyla and Ronon's cage open, and braced himself, fists clenched, ready if Teyla or Ronon made a move-but the camp was stirring, and there were other guards about. They wouldn't have gotten far, and didn't risk it.
He heard the murmur of Teyla's greeting and Rodney's response, took some small comfort in that, but then they were out of hearing range. He didn't even know where the slavers planned to take them.
"McKay looked like shit," Ronon said through the wall, all the frustration and anger boiling in John sounding in his teammate's growl.
"I know," John said.
"Living shit, though," Ronon said, and for now that would have to do.
* * *
The slavers, experienced in their business, never let their workers gather together to plot or riot. The press gangs changed daily, and during the midday lunch break they were discouraged from mingling, with stun-sticks if necessary. Most of the other slaves had shown no interest in talking with the newcomers, and today John didn't try to make conversation, cramming the thick, dry flatbread into his mouth as he kept an eye out for any of his team. He had crossed paths with Ronon while hauling out barrows of dirt from the caved-in passageway, but of Teyla and Rodney, he had seen no sign.
The guards didn't have guns or whips to crack, just the stunners, and looped cords hanging on their belts that were some sort of Pegasus bolas. They didn't need more. John had watched the slavers catch scurrying rabbit-like things with one throw of the bolas, and figured an bolting slave would be a slower, easier target to bring down. And anyone who had felt the zap of a stun-stick came quickly to attention when the guards shouted orders. Tired as he was, John jumped to his feet as fast as any of the slaves when the lunch break was over.
Ronon was still busy hauling buckets of junk up from the lower levels on creaking pulleys. John slowed down as he pushed past him, muttered, "You seen them?"
Ronon grunted, shook his head no. "Want to go find them?"
Hell yeah, John wanted to go-but there were three guards in sight. By John's count there were a dozen guards for the thirty-odd slaves, and at least two tended to be stationed near Ronon at any time; his strength was useful to them, but they weren't too arrogantly stupid to be careless.
And they didn't know where Teyla and Rodney were, how easy it would be to use them as hostages. "No, don't try anything yet," John whispered, and Ronon ducked his head in acknowledgement.
Come nightfall, they were lead back to the circus wagons, John bruised and limping from where a cart of moldy chunks of wall had slammed into his shin. He was shoved into his usual cage alone, but Ronon was wrestled in soon after.
John stared at him. "Not that it's not great to see you, buddy," he said, hoping he was managing a drawl, "but you got any idea where our usual roommates are at?"
The look Ronon gave him, plain even muted in twilight, said he wasn't buying it. "There's no one in the other cage yet," he pointed out.
John cocked an ear and listened through the wall. Ronon was right. The other workers had all been brought to the wagons, but maybe the guards were keeping Teyla and Rodney after school for extracurriculars. That, or they were just waiting until no one was watching to bring them back.
John's temples were pulsing with fatigue, and his leg ached; he could tell himself it was to keep it from stiffening that he paced the cage, eight strides that way and eight back again. Rodney had made snide cracks about black circus leopards and spots showing through John's hair, the first few nights; but Ronon didn't say anything. He watched, though, standing with his arms folded and his face set like stone, his eyes tracking John's useless progress across the floor. Fully upright, the top of Ronon's head almost hit the wagon's heavy ceiling beams; the cage wasn't made to hold the likes of him.
John had done thirteen circuits-not that he was counting-when the rough floorboards vibrated under his boots, with the clang of the other cage's door smashing shut. Muffled footsteps thudded behind the wooden wall, and John stopped, listened close. Ronon stood stock-still in attention.
The murmur of voices was too soft to identify, but the pitch was high; there was only one woman among the workers, and none among the guards. "Teyla?" John asked.
"It is us," Teyla answered immediately. "Rodney and I. You and Ronon?"
"Here," Ronon checked in, his stone face cracking open. "McKay's okay?"
"Not by any practical working definition." Rodney's rasp hardly carried through the wagon's walls, but John, standing close to the bars, could make him out, and exhaled his relief. A McKay who could bitch was doing all right.
"He did very well," Teyla said. "Better than could be expected of him."
"She means I didn't actually pass out or throw up on anyone," Rodney said.
"Far more than that," Teyla said, and then quieted as the guards came with dinner.
After they were finished eating-"You want my fruit, McKay?" Ronon offered, teeth bared in a grin Rodney would be able to hear, if not see; "Oh, clever, mock the immunologically impaired," Rodney returned through the wall, and the sarcasm cutting through his audible weariness made Ronon's grin broaden-and the guards had retired to their tents, out of hearing range, Teyla explained, "We were unable to reclaim the life signs detector from the guards. But what we were working on should prove even more useful."
"What I was working with," Rodney corrected.
"Yes, what you were, Rodney," Teyla answered that rote obnoxiousness good-naturedly, "and I am sure you would have easily lifted that fallen panel by yourself."
"Fine, we," Rodney returned. "These morons don't know what they've found, obviously, we knew that already. So they didn't think much of locking us in a chamber, giving me a pile of stuff to try to fix, and leaving us alone for a while. Long enough for me to access some of the outpost's systems-they've destroyed enough consoles that most of the research database is gone, but Ancient systems are so redundant that the backups are still-" He broke off in a coughing, sneezing fit violent enough to be audible on their side of the wagon.
"Rodney?" John asked, hand pressed to the wooden wall in lieu of smashing his fist there in a futile effort to break through. He could make out Teyla's murmur, knew she'd be doing what she could, and Rodney ought to still have the other two epi-pens on him-but he was the team leader and he should be over there, damn it.
"...Fine," Rodney got out when he was done sneezing, to Teyla or to all of them. "I'm fine, it's not an asthma attack. I'm just hypersensitive now to the damn dust, or pollen, or stupidity-"
"You're always allergic to that," John pointed out. "How many times have you accused other scientists' theories of giving you hives?"
"As I was saying," Rodney said, sounding put upon, as if John were more bothersome than his haywire immune responses, "most of the major systems of the outpost are still intact. The doors, the lights, the ventilation."
"You've got access to all that?" John asked.
"To make sure we couldn't crawl out through a hole in the wall, they put us into one of the more intact chambers," Rodney said. "That is, the best shielded ones in the complex-which happen to be the main control rooms. We're being held by imbeciles."
"Lucky for us," John said. "So you can arrange a distraction for us to escape?"
"That is the idea," Teyla said. "There is this, too. If you would put out your hand, John."
John snaked his hand through the iron bars, fingers open, and grabbed hold of what brushed against them. "Got it." He examined the palm-sized, flat piece of cero-metallic paneling, one of the many fragments littering the outpost's half-buried corridors. It was scratched with tiny chalk markings, and he tilted it into the moonlight as Ronon leaned in to see: Stargate symbols, a gate address.
"That's this world," Rodney said, "one of the few things I did get out of the database. At least we know where we are now-maybe after we get away we can send a mission back, before they've destroyed everything here."
"Right," John said, burning the symbols into his memory with the ease of practice. Ronon, having grown up with basic Stargate mnemonics, was even faster; by the time John had finished he was already looking away. The bit of paneling was too hard to break without tools, but John scrubbed off the chalk with his sleeve and threw it away, through the bars. The guards wouldn't notice just another piece scattered on the ground.
"So what's the plan?" John asked. "When will you be ready to set off the distraction?"
"Tomorrow, a half hour into the lunch break," Rodney said. "Make sure you're outside the complex."
His voice was still hoarse and shaky, and John frowned. "You sure you'll be up for this? We could wait another day-"
"Can't," Rodney said. "I fixed a few of their more useless gadgets, but these morons are impatient. They want weapons, they won't let me keep working on harmless stuff for long. I'm with Teyla, I'll manage. You and Ronon just be ready."
"We will be," Ronon said, grinning dangerously.
"All right," John conceded. "We meet at the clearing with the abandoned shaft, make the run to the Stargate together. Got it?" He waited for Teyla and Rodney's agreement, then said, "Let's get some sleep now. Busy day tomorrow."
He waited, listening through the quiet night, until he thought he heard Rodney's soft snores, then asked, "Teyla?"
"I am awake," she replied. "'Rodney is sleeping soundly."
"How's he doing, really?"
Teyla only hesitated a moment. "Well enough," she said, "though he tired easily. I do not think he could have managed more strenuous labor than these repair tasks. But he did not suffer another attack."
"What about tomorrow? Is he going to be in any shape to run for it?"
Teyla paused again. "As he said, he must be," she said finally. "We have little choice. Rodney knows this."
"It's not like we're going to escape without him," John said.
"Rodney knows this, too," Teyla replied. "Be assured, John, I will guard him."
"Yeah, I know."
"It would do little good to tell you not to worry, would it," Teyla said with teasing asperity.
"Probably not," John admitted. "Team leader and all-it's part of my job description."
"Then I will only tell you to sleep, so you may have the energy to worry more."
John chuckled, probably too softly for Teyla to hear. "Right."
Ronon was already stretched out on the other pallet, though his eyes were open, glittering darkly in the moonlight. "Tomorrow we're getting out of here," he told John, determinedly triumphant, like they were already gone and safe. "All of us." He stretched out, boot soles jarring the iron bars. "Be good to be sleeping on a bed again."
Couldn't argue with that. "Rodney said the same thing every night. Only louder and more times."
Ronon's teeth gleamed as he grinned. "McKay's smarter than he looks, sometimes."
"This plan of his better work."
Ronon shrugged. "They usually do." He rolled onto his side to face John. "We get back, the docs will stick him in a hospital bed, instead of that stupid mattress he's so proud of. He'll whine about that. But he's going to be okay."
It was a statement, not a question, but John answered it anyway. "Yeah."
* * *
Hard at work the next morning, John didn't cross Ronon's path, or catch a glimpse of Rodney or Teyla. At the lunch break, while most of the slaves sat to eat, resting while they could, John made like he was seeking out shade, strolling under the overhanging forest branches as he counted the minutes by.
Looking back at the half-buried outpost, he surreptitiously located the guards-three visible at the perimeter; and probably five more just out of sight. The three he could see were watching him back, alert but at ease. The forest's edge was sparse, the saplings too narrow to hide behind; they weren't expecting him to be stupid enough to make a run for it.
They weren't expecting the ground to start moving, either. Neither was John, for that matter. He was ready for a light show from the Ancient structure, alarms going off, maybe some doors closing. But the flashing lights, and the deafening wail shrieking from the very walls, were nothing to the quaking of the earth under their feet, the solid ground rocking like a table with uneven legs.
One of the guards actually fell over; John didn't take time to enjoy that, because he was already booking it for the forest, grinning as he ran. Good show, McKay. Really going above and beyond-not that he'd expected anything less.
He made it pretty far before he heard shouting, and a whizzing whir and thud of one of the guard's bolas hitting a tree-but all of that was behind him and that was all that mattered. Then he plowed into the underbrush of the deeper forest, crashing through giant shoulder-high ferns that could've fit on the set for Jurassic Park.
No one was following him, as far as he could hear-they had bigger things to worry about. John doubled back and headed for the clearing. An auxiliary to the primary facility, Rodney had guessed; the slaves had been working it their first day here, but then it had been abandoned for the more easily accessed main tunnels, the wagons and slavers' tents picked up and moved. The ground was still rutted and pocked from the wheels of the heavy iron and wooden prisons.
Ronon was already waiting for him, crouched among the long grasses. Keeping low himself as he caught his breath, John didn't see him until Ronon poked his shoulder. John whirled to attack with a blow that the big guy didn't even bother ducking, just blocked with a sweep of his arm.
"You found the place," his teammate said, not much over a whisper.
"Yeah," John replied, keeping his voice also low and his irritation mostly out of it. It wasn't like a clearing this big would be that easy to miss, even on the ground. "Were we followed?"
"Don't think so, don't hear any guards." Ronon shook his head. "Don't hear Teyla or McKay, either."
"Give them time, we don't know where they were when it went off."
"You see it?" Ronon asked, looking amused. "The way the place was shaking?"
"I saw the ground move. Was it the whole structure?"
"Like Atlantis when it flies," Ronon confirmed. "Good thing most of the workers were sitting down. Couple of the guards got knocked around."
By his smirk, John guessed they had had help going down. But Ronon knew when to go for vengeance, and when to run for it. Revenge could wait; escape was their priority.
The sunlight streamed through the forest's dark green-blue leaves, golden beams strained to cooler tones. Midday was hot, sweat tricking down the back of John's neck, and the buzz of alien insects swelled and fell again around them, not interrupted by anyone's approach. Rodney wouldn't have set off his distraction until he and Teyla were properly positioned, just give them the chance to show...
John didn't count the seconds to know it had been too long; his gut told him. "They're not coming."
Ronon didn't question it; Ronon rarely did. He didn't ask if John thought their teammates had been recaptured, just said, "So we go back?"
"I'm going back," John said. "You go on to the Stargate."
Ronon's frown was thunderous, but John shook his head firmly. "It's a good half mile from here, and you're faster. And you've got the best chance of making it through whatever guard they have on it."
"Two of us would have a better chance," Ronon said.
"Can't risk it, we don't know what's happened to Teyla and McKay. If they're in trouble-"
"You don't have a weapon."
"Neither do you," John pointed out. "And I know you're dying to get your blaster back from these slaver bastards, but that'll be easier to reclaim when you've got a P-90 and a jumper at your back-and the longer we stand here talking, the more they could be doing to Teyla and Rodney, so go!"
Ronon didn't nod, just reached behind his back and pulled out a knife. He handed the blade to John, then turned and plunged into the forest without so much as a, "Good luck."
Gripping the knife's leather-wrapped hilt, John took off in the opposite direction, back toward the outpost and his two tardy teammates.
* * *
His legs were burning by the time he made it back to the slave camp. Getting old, John-only a week without his regular jog, and look at him puffing for breath.
Then he lost track of those inconsequential aches, as through the trees he saw the camp. The slavers had called it a day early: all the slaves had been returned to the cages, locked inside; and the dozen or so guards were gathered in the space between the wagons and their tents. And in the middle of that group-
Teyla was on the ground, facedown with her auburn hair spread over the dirt, but she was moving, at least. Rodney was kneeling on the ground behind her, and one of the guards stood over him, back to John, with his dirty blond queue hanging down the length of his spine under his grimy leather coat.
He had his stun-stick out, was holding it to the side of Rodney's head, and Rodney's mouth was open like he was screaming, but he wasn't making any sound that John could hear.
If John had taken a moment to think, he probably could have come up with a better plan than bellowing, "Stop it!" and charging forward with Ronon's knife in his hand.
But then, if he had taken a moment to think, the slaver would've kept the stunner to Rodney's temple for that much longer.
As it was, when the other guards had grabbed John, ripping his knife away, and dropped him into the dust beside his teammates, Rodney was lying on his back, his eyes open but unaware, staring up at the sky as he panted in almost inaudibly shallow breaths.
"Rodney?" John said, reaching toward him. The guards had applied their stun-sticks to loosen his grip on the knife, and his arms were trembling from the aftermath, like the quivers of muscle fatigue after benching over his max. "Come on, buddy, look at me-"
Teyla was awake, but her legs were tangled in two pairs of the guards' bolas; every time she twitched there was a crackle and flash like the charge of the stun-sticks, and she would shudder. "John," she gasped, trying to crawl closer anyway, "I had hoped you were able to escape-"
John shook his head at her, silent command to lie still and not get zapped. He was dizzy himself from the partial stunning, and one of the slavers had clouted him across the head hard enough that he was tasting blood. And Rodney hadn't moved, body rigid, and his wrist was cold when John put his fingers to the pulse point. Going into shock-the anaphylaxis without the proper chance to recover had put him to his limit; now he'd been pushed past it.
The guard standing over them was shouting, "-have to show all you workers how pointless it is to try to escape!" John squinted up into the sun at the man, recognizing the blunt, twisted features of their erstwhile ally.
The slaver sneered down at John. He looked a little put out to have had his trust betrayed. "What, you weren't expecting an escape attempt?" John asked him. "You must be new to the slave-keeping gig, huh-"
He was ready for the backhand, let his head turn with it to dispel the worst force of the blow, though it opened his split lip again, blood tangy on his tongue.
"Now that you've been recaptured," the guard said loudly, towering over John and blocking out the blinding sunlight, "you'll also make a lesson for the others." He gestured at the surrounding cages, positioned so that all of the slaves could see their spectacle. Most of them were watching, some eagerly, grinning in anticipation like this was the best entertainment they'd had in a while; though a few had turned away.
The guard didn't look like he particularly cared one way or another; more into giving the object lesson than actually educating. "Once your friend and his woman have taken their punishment, you'll get what's coming to you," he told John, then crouched to grab Rodney by the collar, hauled him up to his knees again.
Rodney didn't resist, head not lolling back for all the unconscious blankness of his stare-his muscles locked tense, stiff as an unjointed action figure, rigor mortis in a living body. "This is what happens to those stupid enough to try to run," the guard said, projecting to be heard by the watching slaves, and he was smirking as he brought up his stun-stick again.
Teyla cried out in powerless protest. "Wait!" John shouted, pushing himself up, but he didn't make it to his feet before two other guards grabbed him from behind and wrestled him to a standstill. They were bigger than him and their hands were like manacles around his biceps, but he fought back. "You can't-" Rodney still wasn't moving, and his hands at his sides were curled into claws, like he was still in the grip of the stun.
"Maybe we should hold off," one of the guards holding John said, though he didn't relax his grip any. The glimpse of his profile was enough for John to identify the big guard's crony, the other one in on the deal, the man who had brought the medicines the night before last, just in time. "He's no good to us if he dies..."
"This sumpter's no good to us anyway," the taller guard snapped. "He's too weak for real labor, and look what happened when we showed mercy, gave him easier work. They're playing us for fools-"
John's bark of laughter was painfully forced, but it got the slaver's attention away from Rodney. "We don't have to play you for that, you do fine on your own," he said, staring the man in the eye and making his smirk as insulting as possible. "Hell, you wouldn't even have caught me now if I hadn't come back." He widened the smirk. "And showing mercy, is that what you're calling it-I thought you were trying to make some extra cash behind your buddies' backs, or should I not be mentioning our deal-"
"Shut up!" The guard's face went red, all but frothing at the mouth. He threw Rodney down and stalked toward John, stun-stick raised.
Rodney made a faint groan as he crumpled to the ground, and that proof of life was enough that John's smile became real, for the split second before the guard's stun-stick touched his temple.
There was the crack of a released charge, and the world whited out in a pain so total it was annihilating. John couldn't tell where it hurt, couldn't tell what was hurting, whether he still had a body to be hurt. He'd felt the stun-sticks before, several times daily, and just a few minutes ago; but this was a whole other realm, the difference between a paper cut and a severed limb.
When it stopped, it took him a couple moments to realize it was over, another few moments to remember where he was, to become aware of himself again, of his body juddering from the shock like he was seizing, of the ground and grass crushed under him. To hear the shouts and stuttering retorts of gunfire-
But the slavers didn't use guns. John blinked-his eyes were already open, he realized-heaved a breath and rolled onto his side to lever himself up to his knees.
"John?" Teyla had dragged herself to his side to touch his arm, sweat beaded on her forehead and her complexion gray under the warm bronze. The bolas wrapped around her legs were still shocking her whenever she moved to free herself. But her lips were pulled into a tight, grimacing smile. "I believe Ronon's escape was as successful as ours was not."
P-90 fire was still strafing overhead, and the jumper's engines whistled as it soared by. Some of the slavers were standing their ground, but most had scattered into the woods, or were crouched with their hands over their heads.
"Rodney?" John demanded, looking around.
"Yeah?" Rodney said from John's other side, on hands and knees and his face the color of milk gone off, but his eyes were focusing, more or less.
Just past him, hunkered low on the ground, was the guard who had brought the drugs, who had hesitantly spoken up to his buddy against zapping Rodney again. He had his stun-stick in his hand and was looking at Rodney, and John could see the wheels in his head turning, considering what their rescuers would do in a hostage situation.
John met the man's eyes, shook his head. "Don't," he suggested. "Get out of here. Our people aren't here for revenge. Just us."
The slaver stared at him, then glanced at Rodney. Then back at John, taking in his shaky arms, his dizzy wavering, even sitting down.
The look in his eyes, Touch him and I'll kill you: not a threat, only a fact.
Slipping his stun-stick back in his belt, the guard peered over his shoulder at the advancing Marines, then pushed to his feet and took off for the forest, leaving them behind.
John reached for Teyla's legs. His hands were trembling, but he managed to unwind one of the entangled bolas and started on the other, muttering swears as she hissed with every shock.
Rodney blinked at them, then twisted his head toward the people approaching. John followed his gaze. With the sun at their backs it was hard to make out their faces, but a silhouette that tall could only be Ronon, and John raised a hand in an about-time-you-guys-showed-up wave.
"We're getting rescued?" Rodney asked, weary and confused, like he couldn't trust his eyes.
"Yeah, buddy," John told him, reaching over to tap his shoulder, assure him he was awake and not hallucinating. "Unless you'd like to stick around, get some exercise in, sample more of the local fruit-"
Teyla smacked him on the arm, none too gently but it was worth it for Rodney's aggravated, amused snort.
* * *
True to Ronon's prediction, McKay spent the night in the infirmary, getting his blood sugar balanced and his vitals monitored. Though he didn't whine about it, instead was atypically subdued; but after the last few days John figured he was ready for a rest. Ronon brought an extra tray down from the commissary for him, and John set up his laptop on the end of the bed, and the four of them got most of the way through the X-men movies before the medical staff chased them out for the night.
Two days later, when they were organizing the expedition back to M5Y-349, Rodney declined to accompany the team. Since he was still looking a little peaked, and had only been cleared for light duty, John cut him some slack and let him skip the mission.
The planet was pretty much as they had left it, warm yellow sun shining over the green forest and fields. The charred husks of the prison wagons were cold ash, no longer smoldering. After they had released the slaves, John had taken out the wagons with a couple jumper drones-overkill, maybe, but it had felt damn good. The slaves had dialed out, to wherever they liked; those who didn't have a home to return to had been taken to the Alpha site, to relocate with the Athosians or make their own plans.
The slavers had mostly fled in the forest; those who the Atlantis soldiers had captured had been let go anyway. There wasn't any Pegasus tribunal to hold them accountable for their crimes, no code of justice to try them by.
Ronon had suggested execution, not a joke and not even that angrily; matter-of-fact in a way that had shaken John. More than anything because he considered it, could have done it. Lorne and the Marines would have looked the other way, if they wouldn't help-and they might have, after over a week of frustrated searches.
But Rodney, huddled on the back bench of the jumper wrapped in a blanket, had mumbled, "Are you nuts, we can't do that."
And of course they couldn't. Except that John, gripping a P-90 in his hands, remembering that terrible whistling, wheezing sound Rodney had made struggling to breathe; and Rodney's eyes, glazed and blank with agony-John could have done it then, and he went cold later, thinking about it.
Instead they'd let their captors turned captives go, warned them not to come back, and had contented themselves with destroying the tools of their slave trade. John had assigned a couple Marines in a jumper to keep watch on the ruins of the Ancient outpost, told them to ignore anyone leaving through the Stargate, and then returned with his team to Atlantis.
Coming back now, walking through the gate in a clean uniform with the comfortable weight of his P-90 hanging from his vest, felt like a mission to a new world; even the burnt-out wagons might have been the debris of an unknown people. Zelenka and the other four scientists Rodney had selected were ecstatic, scurrying about the ruins of the outpost like kids on Christmas morning, poking at this and that. John sat on a stump beside the entrance of the main tunnel where he'd hauled rocks for a week, gun resting casually in the crook of his elbow as he watched the scientists work from behind his sunglasses.
"Feels weird," Ronon remarked, leaning on a nearby tree with his arms folded, his blaster in hand. He had retrieved it from the guards' tents before they had left the planet, and hadn't let go of it since, that John had noticed. Even on Atlantis he'd been keeping a couple fingers on the grip when he had it holstered.
"Being back here? Yeah," John agreed. He tilted his head back so the sunlight fell warm on his face. "Kind of nice, though, when we don't have to do anything. The weather's great."
"Rodney ought to have come with us," Teyla said.
"You know how McKay feels about sunlight and fresh air."
"Yes," Teyla said, "but after all the objections he made to the work we were forced to do, I would have thought he would want to oversee the exploration."
John shrugged. Rodney could have used the sun-he was looking pale now that the sunburn had faded, and still tired; he'd been retiring from the labs before midnight every night. But John hadn't been all that eager to come back himself, however pleasant it might be sitting in the sun now; he could understand Rodney's reluctance to revisit the place where he'd stopped breathing, not to mention the whole slave labor deal. "This place has been around for ten thousand years, we can come back when he's ready."
Besides, it wasn't as if McKay were staying uninvolved; John had caught him giving Zelenka a laundry list three pages long of things to check out. And when they got back to Atlantis, Rodney descended on all of them, badgering them with questions about the condition of the ruins, and sweeping up the various artifacts his people had collected like some kind of deranged device vacuum cleaner, rushing everything back to his lab for examination with better equipment than sticks and rocks.
He was so excited by the trove of collected gadgets that John assumed he was regretting not going personally after all, and started planning a second trip to M5Y-349, after their upcoming missions were completed.
So he was surprised to get an entirely different email from Dr. McKay the next afternoon. Rather than reply to it, John saved himself some typos and went down to the lab to ask in person. "What do you mean, you aren't available for tomorrow's mission?"
Rodney, busy at two laptops with three esoteric, scratched and dusty devices on the counter before him, wouldn't look him in the eye. That wasn't unexpected; he wouldn't have resorted to sending an email if this were anything he wanted to get confrontational about. Which set off most of John's warning bells, because Rodney rarely backed down from confrontation.
He wasn't prepared for the answer, however. "Not just tomorrow's mission," Rodney said. "I thought my message made that clear."
"'For an indefinite period of time' makes zilch clear," John said. "What happened, weren't you cleared for active duty this morning?"
Rodney shook his head. "Technically, yes, but." He stopped typing, folded his arms and exhaled. "You'll be getting the notice tomorrow. I'm officially removing myself from the off-world team roster."
The words hung in silence for a moment. Eventually John realized the punch-line he was waiting for wasn't coming. "What?"
"If you want another scientist on your team," Rodney said, "I can prepare a few recommendations; Zelenka's an obvious candidate, but there are a couple other engineers and physicists with off-world experience. Or else there are several Air Force and Marines officers with fairly extensive backgrounds in science; the SGC tends to recruit-"
"Wait, what?" John said again. "You're not serious-"
"I'll have the paperwork ready tomorrow, but I wanted to give you a heads' up about the mission, in case you want a fourth for it. It sounds like a cakewalk, but-"
"Rodney, what the hell?"
Rodney set his jaw, still not looking at John. "Recent events have forced me to realize that I am unsuitable for regular off-world travel."
"You've been going through the gate for years," John said. "Now one mission goes sour, and you're going to quit?" He might have laughed, if he wasn't wondering if he should be calling the infirmary. Or else having Lorne check for pod people growing in the lower levels. "Not even the worst mission we've had-hell, it wasn't the worst we've had this year." Okay, the brush with death was closer than he preferred, but they'd come closer. "You weren't even in the infirmary for twenty-four hours."
"You know, it wasn't as bad as I remembered," Rodney remarked, contemplatively. "The anaphylaxis. I mean, it was horrible, definitely not my chosen way to go-peacefully in my sleep at a hundred and twelve-but there's worse. I've faced worse, in the last few years, and I think overall I prefer suffocation to, say, being burned alive."
There was a knot like a ball of ice in the pit of John's stomach. "Look, I know it was rough, but if you don't think you can handle off-world-"
"It's not that," Rodney said, irritated. "I came to terms with my mortality when I started going through the Stargate."
John arched an eyebrow. "Really, now."
"Well, no, not at all, but I've been indoctrinated into the reckless mindset of you adrenaline junky types, such that when necessary I can willfully forget we're a hair's breadth from certain death. So, close enough." Rodney shrugged. "This has nothing to do with me; it's about you. All of you. The team."
"What about us?" John asked, and the cold sick knot in his belly burst; he was so angry he could taste bile. "You don't think we did everything we could? Ronon carried the epi-pen, Teyla-"
"I am painfully aware of what they did-of what you all did," Rodney said over him. He spun his chair around, finally looked at John directly. "I told Teyla to go-I told her to get the hell out of there, when I knew I couldn't make it. The guards were occupied, the way was clear, she could've made it. But she wouldn't leave me behind, and I couldn't keep up, even with her help, I couldn't go fast enough."
"It wasn't your fault," John said. "All the dust and crap in the air, your allergies were reacting to it worse than usual. According to the doctors it's lucky you didn't go full-blown biphasic again."
"And Teyla risked her life, on my sorry luck. Had to risk it, because that's the way we work, we don't leave anyone behind. And you, you came back, for both of us-and that's why."
Rodney faced him, back drawn up straight and rounded shoulders braced. "When you first came to me, told me I would be on your team, and I told you it would be too risky-I wasn't considering the real risk. I didn't properly realize how great a liability my health could be. Not to myself, that I got just fine-but to the people I work with, to our mission. I didn't calculate what the hazard would be to you, keeping me safe."
"The hazard."
"I've got conditions that could potentially kill me. Citrus, bees, the hypoglycemia, I've lived with that all my life. But that they could get other people killed-that I could kill my..." Rodney shook his head hard. "It's not like I didn't know my weaknesses. I'm not a soldier, I've never wanted to be one, but I've done what I could. I've gone to the shooting range, I've let Ronon abuse me in the name of self-defense training. But this-there's nothing I can do about this. I tasted the wrong damn fruit-fruit, for god's sake, how absurd is that?-and all of you paid for it."
"And now you want off the team," John said.
"I don't want-" Rodney started, a knee-jerk reaction that he clamped his mouth down on a second late. "It's the right decision for all concerned," he said tightly instead, his hands balling into fists at his sides. "The risk to you-"
"Yeah," John said, "and what about the risk to us when we don't have you there? Other scientists, sure-who don't think as fast, who shut down when they panic instead of getting better. Who aren't used to working with us and can't do what you do. Damn it, McKay, how the hell would we have gotten away from those slavers, if we hadn't had you to engineer that earthquake?"
"It wasn't an earthquake," Rodney muttered, "just a mass displacement engine applied to-"
"It was a piece of ten thousand year old tech that you got working, right under those bastards' noses, with no tools and no time," John said. "You give me another one of your scientists who you can guarantee can pull off what you do, as fast as you do it-and when they're half-dead-and I'll consider letting you off the team. Until then-I told you way back when, I need the best. That hasn't changed."
Appealing to the McKay ego was always a delicate game-don't want to overfeed that beast. But Rodney wasn't the same man he'd cajoled onto his team a lifetime ago. The stubborn squaring of his jaw was the same, but the look in his eyes was that much older, the eyes of someone who'd seen that much more, who understood what he hadn't before. "The best of what?" Rodney asked quietly. "The smartest man on Atlantis isn't the best for your team, if he's not smart enough to avoid the lethal fruit cup."
"If I'd tasted it first, I could've warned you to avoid it."
"It wasn't your responsibility. My allergies, my job to look out for them."
"And my job to look out for you," John said. "You're not the only one with weaknesses. Teyla's got the Wraith-gene thing, that's damn useful but it's caused its share of problems, too. Ronon's past got you an arrow in the ass."
"And you attract any passing Ascended floozie," Rodney sniped, "but that's-"
"The same thing, pretty much," John cut him off. "Well, not the floozies-but we've all got our kryptonite. Hell, it's not like allergies are unique to you; epi-pens are included in the standard SGC gear for a reason. We're in an alien galaxy, there's plenty of dangers to watch out for. And plenty of dangers that we need that brain of yours to save us from." He pointed at Rodney's forehead with one finger. "We keep you safe out there, and you keep us safe. That's how the team works. That's how we're going to keep working."
Rodney was sitting very still, even his hands quiescent for once, resting on his knees. As stiff as when he'd been hit with the slavers' stun, and John felt as paralyzed. His choice, ultimately; Rodney wasn't military, John couldn't pull rank on him, couldn't do anything but choose a replacement, should Atlantis's head of science request removal from off-world missions.
He could understand what it had been like for Rodney, throat closed up and unable to breathe, his heart pounding too loudly in his ears.
Rodney's lopsided, quicksilver grin, there and gone again, was like a jolt of epinephrine, a surge of returned strength. "Through sickness and in health?"
John grinned back. "'Til death by Wraith, Replicator, or lemon. Whichever comes last."
Rodney narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "If we're going to make this official, you better be ready to wear the other dress, with Teyla. I can't pull off white, and I don't think veils will work with Ronon's hair, even if you could find a gown his size."
"...I don't want to know how your brain works, McKay."
"So." Rodney cleared his throat. "Mission briefing's at 1100 tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Got time for chess now?"
Rodney waved absently. "Later, I've got two crates of unsorted artifacts to go through, and I'm hoping those blond Neanderthals didn't get to all of them."
"I was calling them Vikings myself," John remarked. "Have fun with your doohickeys, then, see you at lunch."
"Right, yeah." Rodney had already turned back to his laptops, prodding the rusty gadget with prongs like doubled tuning forks.
John was at the door when Rodney said, "Hey. Sheppard."
"Yeah?"
Rodney didn't look up, busy with his devices. "Before I forget to say it. Thank you."
For saving his life; for keeping him on his team; for asking him to be on the team to begin with. Rodney didn't say and John didn't ask. It didn't matter; his answer would be the same regardless. "Anytime," John said, and went to make sure lemon meringue wasn't on the commissary's dessert menu today.
the end