Fic: Difficulties in Mathematics (2/2) (Gen, G)
Title: Difficulties in Mathematics
Author: anon
Recipient: with_apostrophe. Hope this comes to close to what you wanted!
Pairing: None/Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: ~13,800
Spoilers: Set soon after "The Shrine" and relies on knowledge of that episode, as well as mention of "The Prodigal".
Notes: With more thanks than I can express to my betas, who know who they are. You guys have the patience of saints and the observation skills of copy-editors. Couldn't have done it without you.
Disclaimer: I don't own the laws of physics, I just like breaking them for fictional purposes. With apologies to Albert Einstein.
Summary:
Rodney paused, trying to think how he was going to explain without causing a general panic. Tact was probably called for and it would be as well to watch his words until he was absolutely sure about what was going on.
Of course, the words that actually came out of his mouth were, "Atlantis is about to be sucked into a black hole."
Part One
*
NOW
The ZPM room was nowhere near as bad as Rodney had feared, which worried him even more. There was no room for second-guessing now, though, and he forced himself to concentrate. Gravity was still pulling them towards the floor, for the moment, and although the ZPM itself was glowing so fiercely that he couldn't actually look at it, the light wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The more energy lost that way, the better, as far as he was concerned.
There was an oddly mangled noise behind him, and he turned to see Sheppard's lips moving weirdly, the sound that was coming from them distorted by the gravity. Rodney shook his head, pointing to the ZPM console and trusting the others to just follow him without being told. There was no way to communicate like this, not with words, anyway.
Teyla suddenly appeared beside him, and Rodney moved further into what he would normally regard as her personal space, gesturing for Ronon and Sheppard to do the same. They all needed to be at roughly the same gravity zone, or this was going to be even more of a nightmare. Gesturing for Sheppard to give Teyla all the crystals he was carrying, Rodney pointed to the panel underneath the console that opened up the main crystal tray. Then he pulled out the ones she would need, just pushing the others out of her hands. They started to fall towards the floor, only to slow a few inches above it, traveling the last part of the distance more like feathers on a breeze than heavy crystals. He'd been right about gravitational zones, and hey, that meant their feet were experiencing time differently to the rest of them, and that was a really bad thought because if that got too severe, they could be talking serious pain.
Someone poked him in the arm, and the jolt brought Rodney back to the present. He spared Sheppard a glare, which was returned in kind, then turned back to Teyla. Laying out the crystals in order, leaving clear gaps for where she should just leave things where they were, he pointed to the panel again. Teyla nodded, then crouched, her movements seeming to slow as she pressed the button for the drawer and began to slot crystals into place.
Since it was kind of weird watching her like that, Rodney hefted the regulator and checked the display on the side. It was based on the Ancient version of a capacitor, only a couple of thousand times more powerful. Hopefully it would hold off enough of the surge that didn't get diverted to the grounding stations. Setting it to maximum capacity, he handed it to Sheppard, then pointed to the panel on the wall where the secondary conduits ran. When Sheppard still hesitated, Rodney rolled his eyes and tugged at the blue patch on the front of his jacket. The blue wires, Sheppard. The blue ones. Come on, get with the program.
Getting the point, Sheppard nodded, jerked his head at Ronon and set off across the room.
It was one the strangest things Rodney had even seen. And considering he'd been in Atlantis for more than four years now, that was saying something. As Sheppard and Ronon got closer to the ZPM, they seemed to slow down, each step taking longer and longer. Sheppard was obviously having trouble keeping hold of the regulator, and very, very slowly both he and Ronon began to fall sideways until they had their feet against the ZPM docking console, walking along it as though it was the floor. Which from their perspective, it probably was. For some reason, they seemed to speed up a little at that point, walking around the console like something out of a bad sci-fi film where the room was being rotated for people to walk on the ceiling. Just watching them was giving Rodney motion sickness, and he forced himself to look away.
It felt as though he was in the fastest moving gravity zone, typing most of the code before Sheppard and Ronon had reached the panel on the far side of the room. Diverting the power was simple enough, and judging by what he could see of the others, he had plenty of time to find the screwed up coding for the generator. By his feet, Teyla was still replacing crystals, ever so slowly, and Rodney was starting to feel the time differential in the way his toes were aching, the slight light-headedness that suggested blood was having a harder time circulating than usual. Without really thinking about it, he scrambled up onto the console, kneeling as best he could and ducking his head to look at the screen.
There it was. They'd programmed the ZPM to take account of the difference between Naquadah and Naquadria, without really making it clear that either were acceptable states for the generator. Atlantis' AI was pretty good, apart from suffering from the fatal flaw of most computer systems, in that it was really, really stupid. Coding was only as good as the person who wrote it, and Rodney hadn't exactly been at his best when he'd put this program together. He understood why Zelenka had missed it, understood why he had missed it, because seriously, only a computer would think that reversing the laws of nature was an acceptable problem-solving technique. As he erased and typed, erased and typed, he wondered vaguely if the ZPM had actually succeeded. If it had seriously managed to restore the decaying Naquadria into Naquadah, then that was going to be huge. Unfortunately, what it had mostly succeeded in doing was nearly blowing up Atlantis, which while not without its spectacular aspects, was much less beneficial for mankind, or at least the part of it stationed in the city.
With the protocols rewritten, all he had to do now was sit and wait, stretching out his back a little and trying to ignore the way both his head and his knees were letting him know how unimpressed they were. Looking across the room, he saw Sheppard and Ronon, moving at even more of a snail's pace now, pulling the panel from the wall with painful slowness. Since he himself was going considerably slower than the rest of the city, he started revising his time estimates upwards. They could be losing weeks down here.
His feet had more or less gone to sleep by the time Teyla appeared beside him, the pain more like nails and chisels than pins and needles. She winced as she straightened up, and Rodney held out a hand to her.
"Here," he said, although the word would be horribly mangled by the time she heard it. His intent must have come across though, because she crawled onto the console beside him, looking over at where Sheppard and Ronon had finally, finally exposed the cables in the wall. He nodded when she turned back to him, not sure who he was trying to reassure. With the crystals in place, all he had to do now was wait for the others to fit the regulator, although they'd probably all want to get the hell out of here before he activated the program. And that was so not a good thought.
Rodney was moving before he'd really had a chance to think about it, pushing Teyla away a little so that he could see the screen again. A signal traveling from this computer to the ZPM was going to take a long time to get there and dammit he should have thought of that earlier. He'd been happily taking his time, acting like a spectator at some kind of Physics in Action show, when he should have been starting the program running. Of course, if he did that, there was every chance that it would activate before Sheppard and Ronon could get clear. But if he didn't, it could take so long for the power to bleed off that the ZPM would reach the point of no return, and the whole thing would have been for nothing.
Teyla was giving him a frightened look, obviously catching his panic. Shaking his head, Rodney pulled her close again, putting his lips to her ear so she'd have a better chance of understanding the words.
"I have to set it going now," he yelled, trying to give the sound more momentum. "Or it might never get there."
She glanced at Ronon and Sheppard, and he saw understanding dawn on her face. Then she set her jaw, turning his head so she could shout back at him.
"Then that is what you should do."
He pulled back, meeting her eyes. Then he nodded, and hit 'activate'.
They both watched the lines of code scroll past for a few long seconds, then Rodney shook himself and nodded towards the door. Walking wasn't an option, so he crawled behind Teyla, feeling like he was taking part in some weird kind of fire drill (smoke rises, so make sure you stay close to the ground where the air will be fresher) and he had to flatten himself at one point when some kind of ripple passed over them, magnetic forces tugging at his jacket zip and the rivets on his boots. That wasn't half as bad as the swirling gravity though, which seemed to reverse the floor and ceiling for a split second, before they landed back with a thump. Rodney groaned, closing his eyes for a moment and trying to get semblance of balance back. He opened them to see Teyla looking back at him, a worried question on her face.
Groaning again, Rodney got back on all fours and started to crawl onwards towards the door.
Once they were within a meter or so of the doorway, things began to even out a little, and Rodney felt confident enough to stand up. Teyla joined him, and they staggered a little into the corridor, neither of them daring to look back yet.
Rodney could feel Teyla's hand gripping his jacket, the movement of her ribs as she sucked in deep breaths. "How far should we go?" she asked, and he was so relieved to be able to hear her again that it took him a moment to answer.
"I have no idea." Carefully, he turned, still half-holding onto Teyla for balance as he peered back into the room.
Sheppard and Ronon were on the far side of the ZPM console, but they seemed to have finished with the regulator, turning back towards the door. Hopefully they'd realize that Rodney and Teyla had already made a run for it and would follow as quickly as they could. Or at least, as quickly as gravity would let them.
After a few long moments, Rodney forced himself to look away, down at Teyla. "I can't promise that this is a safe distance. Do you want to..." He trailed off, not knowing where the sentence was really going. The sensible thing would be to head up to the control room, where Jeannie and Woolsey and everyone else was waiting. Rodney really hoped they'd laid in enough food, because they were probably having a long wait. But going would have meant leaving Sheppard and Ronon behind, and that just wasn't going to happen.
Jeannie would understand. She'd spent time on Atlantis, with his team. She'd understand.
Carefully, Rodney backed away from the door, holding onto Teyla for support. She was probably more exhausted than him from the time dilation effects, and as soon as they came up against the wall, she slumped down, pulling Rodney with her. He felt the exhaustion engulf him as he hit the floor, and to his surprise, Teyla stayed pressed against him, her arm still around his waist. Content to just sit for a moment, Rodney shifted his arm so that at least some blood would get to his fingers, then tipped his head back against the wall.
Inside the room, Sheppard and Ronon were still making their terrifyingly slow way towards the door, although from the looks on their faces, they were moving as quickly as they could. There was no way to know yet if it was fast enough, but if Rodney had been a betting man, he wouldn't have laid odds against his teammates for anything. Beside him, Teyla tensed a little.
"Will they make it?" she asked softly.
Rodney clenched his jaw, trying to speak with the confidence he didn't really have. "They'd better," he said. "I owe Sheppard a beer, and he'll only come back and haunt me if he can't collect."
Teyla held back her laughter, relaxing again. "Of course," she said.
Shifting again, because the floor was doing nothing for his back, Rodney forced himself to keep watching. It was still possible that he'd set the program off too early. That Sheppard and Ronon wouldn't make it out before everything reached the critical point. That he'd got the whole thing wrong and they were going to get their black hole after all. There was no way to know at this point, and he felt the odd calm that he'd learned to associate with only the worst of situations. Sitting in this maelstrom of time-fields, he felt that if he looked hard enough, he'd be able to see all the possible futures, and all the possible pasts, converging on this point. If they hadn't been opening a wormhole to Earth. If he'd been himself when he'd been building the regulator. If he hadn't gone on that mission when he was sick. If he'd never joined his team, if he'd never come to Atlantis.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, pulling Teyla close against him. No more ifs.
Then, all at once, the ZPM console began to glow even brighter, the light almost blinding Rodney so that he lifted an arm to cover his eyes. It was too bright, it was blinding, and something must have gone wrong with the outlets or maybe the grounding stations because this was too much to take and if Sheppard and Ronon were caught in this, there weren't even going to be ashes to collect afterwards.
Behind the light came a wave of pressure like nothing Rodney had ever felt, so that he couldn't even draw breath to scream, and he couldn't move the arm that was now pressed against his face. His skull felt like it had been caught in a vice, and he was fairly sure that his eardrums popped, but with all the other pain that was racing through his body, it was kind of hard to tell. Dimly, he was aware of Teyla's weight against his other arm, forcing it back with what felt like bone-crushing force, and the last thing that he could think before he lost consciousness was that Sheppard was going to kill him for not anticipating that this could have happened.
*****
LATER
Waking up in the infirmary was fairly standard for most members of off-world teams, although Rodney couldn't help but feel that he'd spent more than his fair share of time here recently. On the plus side, the terrible, crushing pain in his bones was gone, and his brain appeared to be intact. On the down side, he ached all over, and his brain was making its presence known by apparently trying to pound its way out of his skull.
He groaned, the headache not improved by someone leaning over and pressing their hand to his forehead.
"Mer?"
It wasn't that he didn't appreciate having her there, but Rodney could really have done without the sisterly concern right at that moment, particularly if it involved talking of any kind. To his relief, the sound receded to gentle murmuring, then he yelped as someone put a firm, cold hand on his face and pulled his eye open. The fact that they accompanied the gesture with shining something about the brightness of a supernova into said eye really only added a little to his annoyance at this point.
"Rodney?" Jennifer's voice wasn't much more gentle than Jeannie's, and Rodney turned his head to try to get away from her flashlight.
"We have to stop meeting like this," he mumbled, getting both eyes open a little more as she laughed. "What happened? Did it work?"
"It worked." Jeannie came into his line of sight just behind Jennifer, smiling down at him. "You guys lost about eight days relative to the rest of the galaxy, but Atlantis only lost two and it was still here when the Daedalus arrived, so no permanent damage was done."
"Us guys?" Rodney repeated, feeling something tight in his chest suddenly loosen.
"The Colonel and Ronon were a bit singed," Jennifer said. "More like a bad sunburn than anything else. You and Teyla got off lightly by comparison."
"Tell that to my headache."
Seriously, next time he was in the infirmary, Rodney was going to have a 'no loud noises' sign made, just for his bed. He was all in favor of - and all-too familiar with - the laughter that came with sheer relief, but couldn't they do that somewhere that wasn't right next to the sick man? Closing his eyes again, he did his best to ignore it until he could finally drift back into mercifully peaceful sleep.
Two days later, Sheppard still looked as though he'd been surfing without sunscreen again, and Rodney's head still ached, but they were both on their feet to see Jeannie off, for real this time. It was definitely worth it, if only to see Sheppard's face when she pulled him into a tight hug. Rodney couldn't be sure, but he was fairly sure she'd done that on purpose.
"I'd tell you to take care again," she said into Rodney's ear as he held her close, "but that's kind of pointless around here, isn't it?"
"Definitely not." Smiling a little, he let her go and stepped away. "You know me. Always looking after myself."
The look she gave him was remarkably similar to when he'd had his first paper rejected and had been convinced that he was insane rather than brilliant, and that he was never going to amount to anything, ever. It somehow managed to combine reproof, disbelief, amusement and affection, and he found himself stuffing his hands in his pocket and shuffling his feet rather than meet her eye.
"Keep telling yourself that, Mer," she said, leaning up to kiss his cheek, then stepping away ready for transportation up to the Daedalus. "Bye, everyone. It was quite the experience."
Rodney lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave, then stared at the wall for a long moment after she'd disappeared. Then he felt someone bump against his shoulder.
"So," Sheppard said, carefully not looking at him. "You still off active duty?"
"Another five days at least. Apparently my head's hard but not that hard." Rodney waved his fingers by his temple. "You?"
"A week, maybe more. Got kind of," he lifted his hands and brought them together as though clapping in slow motion, "squished. Doc wants to give it a bit longer to make sure there's nothing seriously wrong."
"Good plan." There was something else, Rodney could tell from Sheppard's expression, but he was damned if he was going to ask. "What do you plan on doing with yourself?"
Taking an overly deep breath, Sheppard shrugged. "Thought I might head down to the east pier. See if the new cars are any better than the ones you drove into the ocean."
"Oh, would you stop with the- Wait. New cars?"
"Daedalus was just here wasn't it?" It was hard to tell with the sunburn, but Rodney was fairly sure the tips of Sheppard's ears were turning pink. "Want to try them out?"
"Well, I did say I'd help Zelenka convert the Naquadria generator back to a Naquadah one, but it's just a supervisory thing, really," he added quickly. "Give me ten minutes."
"Don't be sore if I start without you," Sheppard said, shooting him a sideways smile before heading for the door.
Rubbing his hands together, Rodney turned in the opposite direction and hurried towards the labs, wondering if he had time to swing by his quarters for the booster kit he'd put together after the last pair of cars got trashed. He grinned as he stepped into the transporter. This time, Sheppard was going down.
Author: anon
Recipient: with_apostrophe. Hope this comes to close to what you wanted!
Pairing: None/Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: ~13,800
Spoilers: Set soon after "The Shrine" and relies on knowledge of that episode, as well as mention of "The Prodigal".
Notes: With more thanks than I can express to my betas, who know who they are. You guys have the patience of saints and the observation skills of copy-editors. Couldn't have done it without you.
Disclaimer: I don't own the laws of physics, I just like breaking them for fictional purposes. With apologies to Albert Einstein.
Summary:
Rodney paused, trying to think how he was going to explain without causing a general panic. Tact was probably called for and it would be as well to watch his words until he was absolutely sure about what was going on.
Of course, the words that actually came out of his mouth were, "Atlantis is about to be sucked into a black hole."
Part One
*
NOW
The ZPM room was nowhere near as bad as Rodney had feared, which worried him even more. There was no room for second-guessing now, though, and he forced himself to concentrate. Gravity was still pulling them towards the floor, for the moment, and although the ZPM itself was glowing so fiercely that he couldn't actually look at it, the light wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The more energy lost that way, the better, as far as he was concerned.
There was an oddly mangled noise behind him, and he turned to see Sheppard's lips moving weirdly, the sound that was coming from them distorted by the gravity. Rodney shook his head, pointing to the ZPM console and trusting the others to just follow him without being told. There was no way to communicate like this, not with words, anyway.
Teyla suddenly appeared beside him, and Rodney moved further into what he would normally regard as her personal space, gesturing for Ronon and Sheppard to do the same. They all needed to be at roughly the same gravity zone, or this was going to be even more of a nightmare. Gesturing for Sheppard to give Teyla all the crystals he was carrying, Rodney pointed to the panel underneath the console that opened up the main crystal tray. Then he pulled out the ones she would need, just pushing the others out of her hands. They started to fall towards the floor, only to slow a few inches above it, traveling the last part of the distance more like feathers on a breeze than heavy crystals. He'd been right about gravitational zones, and hey, that meant their feet were experiencing time differently to the rest of them, and that was a really bad thought because if that got too severe, they could be talking serious pain.
Someone poked him in the arm, and the jolt brought Rodney back to the present. He spared Sheppard a glare, which was returned in kind, then turned back to Teyla. Laying out the crystals in order, leaving clear gaps for where she should just leave things where they were, he pointed to the panel again. Teyla nodded, then crouched, her movements seeming to slow as she pressed the button for the drawer and began to slot crystals into place.
Since it was kind of weird watching her like that, Rodney hefted the regulator and checked the display on the side. It was based on the Ancient version of a capacitor, only a couple of thousand times more powerful. Hopefully it would hold off enough of the surge that didn't get diverted to the grounding stations. Setting it to maximum capacity, he handed it to Sheppard, then pointed to the panel on the wall where the secondary conduits ran. When Sheppard still hesitated, Rodney rolled his eyes and tugged at the blue patch on the front of his jacket. The blue wires, Sheppard. The blue ones. Come on, get with the program.
Getting the point, Sheppard nodded, jerked his head at Ronon and set off across the room.
It was one the strangest things Rodney had even seen. And considering he'd been in Atlantis for more than four years now, that was saying something. As Sheppard and Ronon got closer to the ZPM, they seemed to slow down, each step taking longer and longer. Sheppard was obviously having trouble keeping hold of the regulator, and very, very slowly both he and Ronon began to fall sideways until they had their feet against the ZPM docking console, walking along it as though it was the floor. Which from their perspective, it probably was. For some reason, they seemed to speed up a little at that point, walking around the console like something out of a bad sci-fi film where the room was being rotated for people to walk on the ceiling. Just watching them was giving Rodney motion sickness, and he forced himself to look away.
It felt as though he was in the fastest moving gravity zone, typing most of the code before Sheppard and Ronon had reached the panel on the far side of the room. Diverting the power was simple enough, and judging by what he could see of the others, he had plenty of time to find the screwed up coding for the generator. By his feet, Teyla was still replacing crystals, ever so slowly, and Rodney was starting to feel the time differential in the way his toes were aching, the slight light-headedness that suggested blood was having a harder time circulating than usual. Without really thinking about it, he scrambled up onto the console, kneeling as best he could and ducking his head to look at the screen.
There it was. They'd programmed the ZPM to take account of the difference between Naquadah and Naquadria, without really making it clear that either were acceptable states for the generator. Atlantis' AI was pretty good, apart from suffering from the fatal flaw of most computer systems, in that it was really, really stupid. Coding was only as good as the person who wrote it, and Rodney hadn't exactly been at his best when he'd put this program together. He understood why Zelenka had missed it, understood why he had missed it, because seriously, only a computer would think that reversing the laws of nature was an acceptable problem-solving technique. As he erased and typed, erased and typed, he wondered vaguely if the ZPM had actually succeeded. If it had seriously managed to restore the decaying Naquadria into Naquadah, then that was going to be huge. Unfortunately, what it had mostly succeeded in doing was nearly blowing up Atlantis, which while not without its spectacular aspects, was much less beneficial for mankind, or at least the part of it stationed in the city.
With the protocols rewritten, all he had to do now was sit and wait, stretching out his back a little and trying to ignore the way both his head and his knees were letting him know how unimpressed they were. Looking across the room, he saw Sheppard and Ronon, moving at even more of a snail's pace now, pulling the panel from the wall with painful slowness. Since he himself was going considerably slower than the rest of the city, he started revising his time estimates upwards. They could be losing weeks down here.
His feet had more or less gone to sleep by the time Teyla appeared beside him, the pain more like nails and chisels than pins and needles. She winced as she straightened up, and Rodney held out a hand to her.
"Here," he said, although the word would be horribly mangled by the time she heard it. His intent must have come across though, because she crawled onto the console beside him, looking over at where Sheppard and Ronon had finally, finally exposed the cables in the wall. He nodded when she turned back to him, not sure who he was trying to reassure. With the crystals in place, all he had to do now was wait for the others to fit the regulator, although they'd probably all want to get the hell out of here before he activated the program. And that was so not a good thought.
Rodney was moving before he'd really had a chance to think about it, pushing Teyla away a little so that he could see the screen again. A signal traveling from this computer to the ZPM was going to take a long time to get there and dammit he should have thought of that earlier. He'd been happily taking his time, acting like a spectator at some kind of Physics in Action show, when he should have been starting the program running. Of course, if he did that, there was every chance that it would activate before Sheppard and Ronon could get clear. But if he didn't, it could take so long for the power to bleed off that the ZPM would reach the point of no return, and the whole thing would have been for nothing.
Teyla was giving him a frightened look, obviously catching his panic. Shaking his head, Rodney pulled her close again, putting his lips to her ear so she'd have a better chance of understanding the words.
"I have to set it going now," he yelled, trying to give the sound more momentum. "Or it might never get there."
She glanced at Ronon and Sheppard, and he saw understanding dawn on her face. Then she set her jaw, turning his head so she could shout back at him.
"Then that is what you should do."
He pulled back, meeting her eyes. Then he nodded, and hit 'activate'.
They both watched the lines of code scroll past for a few long seconds, then Rodney shook himself and nodded towards the door. Walking wasn't an option, so he crawled behind Teyla, feeling like he was taking part in some weird kind of fire drill (smoke rises, so make sure you stay close to the ground where the air will be fresher) and he had to flatten himself at one point when some kind of ripple passed over them, magnetic forces tugging at his jacket zip and the rivets on his boots. That wasn't half as bad as the swirling gravity though, which seemed to reverse the floor and ceiling for a split second, before they landed back with a thump. Rodney groaned, closing his eyes for a moment and trying to get semblance of balance back. He opened them to see Teyla looking back at him, a worried question on her face.
Groaning again, Rodney got back on all fours and started to crawl onwards towards the door.
Once they were within a meter or so of the doorway, things began to even out a little, and Rodney felt confident enough to stand up. Teyla joined him, and they staggered a little into the corridor, neither of them daring to look back yet.
Rodney could feel Teyla's hand gripping his jacket, the movement of her ribs as she sucked in deep breaths. "How far should we go?" she asked, and he was so relieved to be able to hear her again that it took him a moment to answer.
"I have no idea." Carefully, he turned, still half-holding onto Teyla for balance as he peered back into the room.
Sheppard and Ronon were on the far side of the ZPM console, but they seemed to have finished with the regulator, turning back towards the door. Hopefully they'd realize that Rodney and Teyla had already made a run for it and would follow as quickly as they could. Or at least, as quickly as gravity would let them.
After a few long moments, Rodney forced himself to look away, down at Teyla. "I can't promise that this is a safe distance. Do you want to..." He trailed off, not knowing where the sentence was really going. The sensible thing would be to head up to the control room, where Jeannie and Woolsey and everyone else was waiting. Rodney really hoped they'd laid in enough food, because they were probably having a long wait. But going would have meant leaving Sheppard and Ronon behind, and that just wasn't going to happen.
Jeannie would understand. She'd spent time on Atlantis, with his team. She'd understand.
Carefully, Rodney backed away from the door, holding onto Teyla for support. She was probably more exhausted than him from the time dilation effects, and as soon as they came up against the wall, she slumped down, pulling Rodney with her. He felt the exhaustion engulf him as he hit the floor, and to his surprise, Teyla stayed pressed against him, her arm still around his waist. Content to just sit for a moment, Rodney shifted his arm so that at least some blood would get to his fingers, then tipped his head back against the wall.
Inside the room, Sheppard and Ronon were still making their terrifyingly slow way towards the door, although from the looks on their faces, they were moving as quickly as they could. There was no way to know yet if it was fast enough, but if Rodney had been a betting man, he wouldn't have laid odds against his teammates for anything. Beside him, Teyla tensed a little.
"Will they make it?" she asked softly.
Rodney clenched his jaw, trying to speak with the confidence he didn't really have. "They'd better," he said. "I owe Sheppard a beer, and he'll only come back and haunt me if he can't collect."
Teyla held back her laughter, relaxing again. "Of course," she said.
Shifting again, because the floor was doing nothing for his back, Rodney forced himself to keep watching. It was still possible that he'd set the program off too early. That Sheppard and Ronon wouldn't make it out before everything reached the critical point. That he'd got the whole thing wrong and they were going to get their black hole after all. There was no way to know at this point, and he felt the odd calm that he'd learned to associate with only the worst of situations. Sitting in this maelstrom of time-fields, he felt that if he looked hard enough, he'd be able to see all the possible futures, and all the possible pasts, converging on this point. If they hadn't been opening a wormhole to Earth. If he'd been himself when he'd been building the regulator. If he hadn't gone on that mission when he was sick. If he'd never joined his team, if he'd never come to Atlantis.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, pulling Teyla close against him. No more ifs.
Then, all at once, the ZPM console began to glow even brighter, the light almost blinding Rodney so that he lifted an arm to cover his eyes. It was too bright, it was blinding, and something must have gone wrong with the outlets or maybe the grounding stations because this was too much to take and if Sheppard and Ronon were caught in this, there weren't even going to be ashes to collect afterwards.
Behind the light came a wave of pressure like nothing Rodney had ever felt, so that he couldn't even draw breath to scream, and he couldn't move the arm that was now pressed against his face. His skull felt like it had been caught in a vice, and he was fairly sure that his eardrums popped, but with all the other pain that was racing through his body, it was kind of hard to tell. Dimly, he was aware of Teyla's weight against his other arm, forcing it back with what felt like bone-crushing force, and the last thing that he could think before he lost consciousness was that Sheppard was going to kill him for not anticipating that this could have happened.
*****
LATER
Waking up in the infirmary was fairly standard for most members of off-world teams, although Rodney couldn't help but feel that he'd spent more than his fair share of time here recently. On the plus side, the terrible, crushing pain in his bones was gone, and his brain appeared to be intact. On the down side, he ached all over, and his brain was making its presence known by apparently trying to pound its way out of his skull.
He groaned, the headache not improved by someone leaning over and pressing their hand to his forehead.
"Mer?"
It wasn't that he didn't appreciate having her there, but Rodney could really have done without the sisterly concern right at that moment, particularly if it involved talking of any kind. To his relief, the sound receded to gentle murmuring, then he yelped as someone put a firm, cold hand on his face and pulled his eye open. The fact that they accompanied the gesture with shining something about the brightness of a supernova into said eye really only added a little to his annoyance at this point.
"Rodney?" Jennifer's voice wasn't much more gentle than Jeannie's, and Rodney turned his head to try to get away from her flashlight.
"We have to stop meeting like this," he mumbled, getting both eyes open a little more as she laughed. "What happened? Did it work?"
"It worked." Jeannie came into his line of sight just behind Jennifer, smiling down at him. "You guys lost about eight days relative to the rest of the galaxy, but Atlantis only lost two and it was still here when the Daedalus arrived, so no permanent damage was done."
"Us guys?" Rodney repeated, feeling something tight in his chest suddenly loosen.
"The Colonel and Ronon were a bit singed," Jennifer said. "More like a bad sunburn than anything else. You and Teyla got off lightly by comparison."
"Tell that to my headache."
Seriously, next time he was in the infirmary, Rodney was going to have a 'no loud noises' sign made, just for his bed. He was all in favor of - and all-too familiar with - the laughter that came with sheer relief, but couldn't they do that somewhere that wasn't right next to the sick man? Closing his eyes again, he did his best to ignore it until he could finally drift back into mercifully peaceful sleep.
Two days later, Sheppard still looked as though he'd been surfing without sunscreen again, and Rodney's head still ached, but they were both on their feet to see Jeannie off, for real this time. It was definitely worth it, if only to see Sheppard's face when she pulled him into a tight hug. Rodney couldn't be sure, but he was fairly sure she'd done that on purpose.
"I'd tell you to take care again," she said into Rodney's ear as he held her close, "but that's kind of pointless around here, isn't it?"
"Definitely not." Smiling a little, he let her go and stepped away. "You know me. Always looking after myself."
The look she gave him was remarkably similar to when he'd had his first paper rejected and had been convinced that he was insane rather than brilliant, and that he was never going to amount to anything, ever. It somehow managed to combine reproof, disbelief, amusement and affection, and he found himself stuffing his hands in his pocket and shuffling his feet rather than meet her eye.
"Keep telling yourself that, Mer," she said, leaning up to kiss his cheek, then stepping away ready for transportation up to the Daedalus. "Bye, everyone. It was quite the experience."
Rodney lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave, then stared at the wall for a long moment after she'd disappeared. Then he felt someone bump against his shoulder.
"So," Sheppard said, carefully not looking at him. "You still off active duty?"
"Another five days at least. Apparently my head's hard but not that hard." Rodney waved his fingers by his temple. "You?"
"A week, maybe more. Got kind of," he lifted his hands and brought them together as though clapping in slow motion, "squished. Doc wants to give it a bit longer to make sure there's nothing seriously wrong."
"Good plan." There was something else, Rodney could tell from Sheppard's expression, but he was damned if he was going to ask. "What do you plan on doing with yourself?"
Taking an overly deep breath, Sheppard shrugged. "Thought I might head down to the east pier. See if the new cars are any better than the ones you drove into the ocean."
"Oh, would you stop with the- Wait. New cars?"
"Daedalus was just here wasn't it?" It was hard to tell with the sunburn, but Rodney was fairly sure the tips of Sheppard's ears were turning pink. "Want to try them out?"
"Well, I did say I'd help Zelenka convert the Naquadria generator back to a Naquadah one, but it's just a supervisory thing, really," he added quickly. "Give me ten minutes."
"Don't be sore if I start without you," Sheppard said, shooting him a sideways smile before heading for the door.
Rubbing his hands together, Rodney turned in the opposite direction and hurried towards the labs, wondering if he had time to swing by his quarters for the booster kit he'd put together after the last pair of cars got trashed. He grinned as he stepped into the transporter. This time, Sheppard was going down.