TEAM SHEPPARD: cold comfort, "A New Pair of Skates"

[trobadora]

Title: A New Pair of Skates
Author: saffronhouse
Team: Sheppard
Prompt: cold comfort
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Sheppard goes missing. Rodney is determined to find him.
Notes: Thanks to Excellency and Dasha for looking over my shoulder!

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The Snow Queen had said to him, "When you can find out this, you shall be your own master, and I will give you the whole world and a new pair of skates."

"The Snow Queen" (Hans Christian Andersen: 1845)

By now, Rodney was pretty sure he was in the wrong story, but his worry over Sheppard overrode every other concern. He stomped up to the garden gate and called loudly when he found it locked. Sam Carter came to the window of the little cottage beyond. "What do you want, McKay?"
"It's that idiot Sheppard," Rodney said. "He's gone and hitched his puddlejumper to a wraith hive ship, and it's carried him off god knows where. Have you seen him?"
Sam blinked. "What?"
"I said, Sheppard hitched his little sled to a giant white sleigh in the city square --"
"No, I heard you the first time."
"Then why did you ask me to repeat myself? Have you seen him?"
Sam looked concerned, but she crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "I haven't. I'm sorry."
McKay rattled the garden gate. Still locked. A few rose petals whispered down to land on the path. "Well, have you heard anything at all? You know how people talk. And would you mind letting me in? I lost my shoes in the river, and I'm soaking wet."
Now Sam just looked skeptical. But after a moment she walked down the path and unlocked the garden gate for Rodney. "I'm sorry," she said. "I really haven't heard a peep. I would let you know if I had. And I don't have anything that would fit you." She regarded him thoughtfully. "Oh. Maybe an old housecoat or something."
McKay rolled his eyes. "Even that would be better than nothing."
The dahlias growing luxuriantly on either side of the path snickered suspiciously to themselves. Rodney made a point of ignoring them.
"Wait here," Sam told him when they reached the kitchen door. "I don't want you dripping all over the floor." Rodney huffed in annoyance, but he waited. After what seemed like a very long time, she returned with a nightshirt of plain muslin. "I found this," she said. "I think it used to be Daniel's."
"Um, thanks. Can I come inside to change?"
"Use the garden house." She pointed around the cottage. "No one will see you behind the hollyhocks."
"Oh, you have got to be kidding!" Rodney protested, but when Sam looked ready to slam the door on him and leave him dripping on the doorstep, he snatched the nightshirt from her and stalked around the cottage, following the flagstone path. The foxgloves grew close on either side, their speckled white caps whispering meadow secrets to each other the way seashells whispered of the sea. Around the back, as Sam had promised, a gazebo rose in the center of a stand of hollyhocks. The stalks were taller than Rodney's head, and the flowers themselves were all silky black, shining where the sunlight splashed on them.
Rodney made his way into the little gazebo and found himself ensconced in a private green world. It wasn't ideal, but it was the first thing that hadn't been actively horrible since Sheppard had disappeared. He stripped off his soaking wet clothes. Clematis twined up the sides of the gazebo, and when he noticed the heavy purple flowers, fat with petals doubled and tripled from the center, he felt very pale and naked before their purple luxuriance. He pulled on the muslin nightshirt as quickly as he could. The sleeves reached his fingertips.
"Now what are you looking at?" he demanded of the clematis blossoms.
"Up, down," they told him. "Charm, strange."
"Do you have something sensible to say about quantum chromodynamics?" he snapped back. "Or did Sam think it would be funny to mock me? Wait a minute." Another idea occurred to him. "Is that your way of telling me you know where Sheppard is?"
But the clematis just nodded in the breeze. It was no more than you would expect from a stupid flowering vine, Rodney thought savagely. He stepped outside and looked at the great black hollyhocks towering so far overhead. He reined in his temper and asked as politely as he could, "If Sheppard flew this way you would have seen him, right? Skinny guy, spiky dark hair, probably having the time of his life hitching a ride from the fastest ship around and never sparing a thought for me--" To his mortification, his voice cracked at that, so Rodney snapped his mouth shut.
The hollyhocks hummed, noncommittal.
"Oh, come on! Right overhead? I know Sheppard. He would have been tearing up the heavens."
The hollyhocks wouldn't answer, but the tiger lily did. "A man stepped into a puddle of blue, and never came out the other end," the tiger lily said musingly.
"Wait, what man? Sheppard? Was there a problem with the stargate?"
"And now he lies in a crystal coffin in the heart of the forest where snowdrops bloom in the spring."
Rodney felt his legs folding up beneath him. "Sheppard's gone?" he whispered. "He's dead?"
"I've got him in sight, Dr. Keller. We haven't encountered any resistance so far and no guards are visible. He's strung up in the middle of some sort of -- I don't know what the hell it is. A little glass house of some kind, maybe a greenhouse."
The radio crackled. "Is he responsive?"
"We're not close enough to say. I'll keep you apprised."
The ironwork in the door was painted white, and the glass was kept very, very clean. It gave John a lot of satisfaction to put his elbow through one of the panes. Heat rushed out like a gasp. Within, McKay sagged against the pristine white supports in the center of the little arbor, and he didn't raise his head at the sound of breaking glass.
"It is always a mistake to pay too much attention to flowers," said someone close at hand. "They are only interested in their own stories. Personally, I don't think tiger lily would know Colonel Sheppard from a bouquet of forget-me-nots."
Rodney turned his head with an effort. Standing on the path near him was a scruffy little yellow cat. "What are you saying? Do you know where Sheppard is?"
"Ne, myself, I do not know where he is," said the yellow cat. He licked a front paw thoughtfully and tried to smooth the ruffled fur behind his left ear.
"But you know something," Rodney insisted. "If you do, you have to tell me."
The yellow cat shrugged. "Pigeons will beg sweet tidbits from the back door of the castle, where the rookery overlooks the kitchen garden."
"What the hell are you talking about? What do pigeons have to do with Colonel Sheppard getting himself lost?"
"You are right," said the cat in its heavy Czech accent. "Why would you care? What does it matter that the pigeons dined on wedding cake crumbs after the princess married her fine prince?"
"A fine prince -- you mean Sheppard? Colonel Sheppard has married a princess?" Rodney wasn't sure how he felt about that. Wildly relieved that Sheppard had been found of course, but deep in his heart something ached and burned. "Which way is the castle? You have to take me there!"
The yellow cat considered while Rodney all but danced in impatience. "You seem to be an irritable and ungrateful man," he said at last. "Showing you the way to the castle does not sound like a very pleasant way to spend my afternoon."
Rodney swallowed hard. "Please?"
The yellow cat twitched its tail and turned. "Follow me if you're coming."

Rodney scampered to catch up. "Thank you, thank you."
He called over his shoulder, "Goodbye, Sam! I know you wanted to keep me here forever, but I have to find Colonel Sheppard."
Rodney didn't see the little yellow cat roll his eyes.

They traveled all through the day and all through the night, through rain and fog and the heat of the sun, Rodney in nothing but the muslin nightshirt. He complained mightily, but the little yellow cat only looked at him and eventually, his complaints trailed away. At long last, when Rodney was almost fainting with exhaustion and irritation, they came to the gates of a great stone castle.

"Well, come on," Rodney said, rushing up to knock. "What are you waiting for?"

"Look at us," said the cat. "You in a nightshirt and me, a scruffy little yellow cat. Do you think they will let us in the front gates of this fine castle to see the princess and her new prince?"

"Oh." Rodney deflated a bit. " I didn't think of that."

But once again the cat took pity on Rodney, as he had many times since first meeting him in Sam's garden. "All is not lost," he said. "Fortunately, I am a good friend to the pigeons who live in the rookery above the kitchen. They will let us in through the kitchen door."

And so it was. The yellow cat called to the pigeons, and they flew down and unlocked a little door set in the wall. The cat slipped through easily, but Rodney had to get down on his hands and knees to crawl in. Then the yellow cat led Rodney through the kitchen and down the long dark corridors where all the castle lay sleeping.

All at once, a terrible white host came rushing along the hall. Long hair streamed down their backs. Their teeth were jagged and sharp, their white faces marked with strange designs, and they wore cloaks made of human skin.

"Aaaah!" Rodney screamed, and fell face first on the floor.

"Don't be frightened," said the yellow cat, not without sympathy. "They are only dreams of the wraith. When the princess and the prince go to sleep, their dreams race along the corridors."

Rodney got up shakily. "That's horrible," he said.

"The wraith are horrible creatures," the little yellow cat agreed solemnly.

"See? That's what I don't understand. Why would Sheppard chase after a wraith queen in the first place?" Rodney exclaimed in frustration, but the yellow cat had no answer for that. He led Rodney to the royal bedchamber, and there they found three beds side by side. All three had been woven from the branches of living trees, so that growing green leaves rustled above the heads of the sleeping royals. Even that hadn't been enough to keep dreams of the wraith at bay, Rodney thought rather sadly to himself. He went to the first bed. Teyla was sleeping curled on her side, her face peaceful now that her nightmares had galloped away.

In the next bed lay her infant son. Rodney leaned in close, careful not to disturb him. He thought perhaps the baby had Sheppard's hair, but maybe all infants did. Lastly he went to the bedside of the prince himself. The soft green blankets were pulled up all the way past the tips of his pointed ears that Rodney knew so well.
The prince's hair was very short. Rodney wondered if he had gotten it cut for the wedding. Trembling a little, Rodney pulled back the blanket. His ears weren't pointed. Did he get his ears bobbed too? Rodney wondered. Although he tried to be gentle, his hand shook so he awoke the sleeping prince. Dark brown eyes, deep set in a stern face, blinked up at Rodney. It wasn't John Sheppard.

The prince sat up in bed. "Who are you?" he asked Rodney. "And what are you doing here in the castle?"
Rodney felt his shoulders sag. "I thought you were Colonel Sheppard. He hitched his sleigh to that of a terrible queen, and now I can't find him anywhere."
By now, Teyla had also awakened. She was a very wise and a very long-suffering princess, all things considered, and she rose from her bed and scooped her baby up in her arms. "We know of John Sheppard," she told Rodney. "He has been a good friend to our people, but we have not heard of him passing this way recently."
The prince Kanaan was a soft-hearted man, despite his dark, scowling brows, and he made up a little bed for Rodney so that he could sleep the rest of the night in comfort. When morning dawned, he and Teyla gave Rodney a fine new suit of clothes, including a pair of sturdy boots so he would no longer have to wander the wide world barefoot in a nightshirt. For the little yellow cat, they prepared a wicker basket piled high with feather pillows, and set beside it a blue china bowl full of fresh cream.
Rodney grumbled because no one could tell him anything about Sheppard's whereabouts, but as he was leaving the palace he remembered some of his manners, and thanked the princess and her prince for their kindness.
Teyla smiled at Rodney. Placing her careful hands on either side of his head, she brought his brow down to touch her own. "Be well, Rodney," she said. "I hope you find John soon."
"Good luck, Rodney," said the cat, and went back to cleaning the cream from his whiskers.
Atlantis had been trading with Peregrine's Holt since their first year in the Pegasus Galaxy. Although that world didn't raise a surplus of food crops, choosing (inexplicably, in the eyes of the hungry first year 'lanteans) to devote any extra farming resources to growing magnificent flower beds, their craftsmen did manufacture truly extraordinary watch works. In those often-desperate days, a source of reliable springs and gears had saved lives.
With the establishment of a supply line to Earth, trade with Peregrine's Holt now consisted almost entirely of luxury goods -- beautiful watches on intricate metal chains which military people and scientists alike were known to show off proudly, despite their measuring a mean solar day about seventeen minutes longer than the one on Atlantis -- as well as flower bulbs that the botanists claimed were for research, even though an awful lot seemed to end up blooming on window sills in personal quarters, and wind-up toys of every description. Ronon had a mechanical Peregrine lily that unfurled petals enameled in gaudy shades of purple and yellow, and McKay teased John mercilessly about his little red tin soldier that presented arms and clicked its heels when you turned the key.
Nevertheless, McKay was usually quick to volunteer for trade missions there. John snorted, because McKay always had his eye set on some Peregrine-made gadget or other, but neither he nor Sam had finally seen any reason to deny him this time, and McKay happily accompanied Lorne's team to Peregrine's Holt.
Clockworks and gardens, and a four-year history of peaceful trade. Gentlemen in starched white collars, ladies in tailored suits of soft dove gray, public fountains splashing water that had traveled miles in stone aqueducts from the snow-capped western mountains, broad streets paved in white cobblestones. What could go wrong?
And then the emergency call came through the gate. Lorne was on the other side, explaining that in the middle of the grand ceremony to dedicate a new sundial in a field of lilies, the real life versions of Ronon's purple and yellow toy, McKay had chosen the worst of all possible times to actually listen to a political speech.
And had finally realized that, for all their watchmaking sophistication, Peregrine's Holt subscribed to a geocentric view of their universe.
"I'm sorry, sir. I should have gotten Dr. McKay out of that situation right then and there, but by the time I had realized what was happening, he was ranting that a society of engineers should already have noticed that the math was too clumsy, and then they were gone."
"Gone, Major?" John snapped, suiting up while he talked.
"I mean, Dr. McKay and half the audience for the dedication walked off to the nearest pub, still talking about wandering stars and retrograde motion and perfect orbs --"
"And you just let him go?"
"No, sir! I mean, we did, but we accompanied the doctor, of course. They were there talking for hours, and I didn't realize it was a problem until those fellows in the red robes showed up."
Oh, lord. "The Spanish Inquisition?"
"I'm afraid so, Colonel."
The humorless men in scarlet robes and tall pointed hats had been a standing joke for years. They usually had a seat at the table during state dinners on Peregrine's Holt, or turned up on market day, always startling amongst a folk who otherwise dressed so soberly, and of course, no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.
It wasn't funny anymore.
"They just poured into the place. I take full responsibility, sir. They had McKay before we realized what was happening."
Ronon and Teyla joined John before the gate. "Have you had any communication with the party holding Dr. McKay?"
"Briefly, sir. A representative who identified himself as Bishop Wull said they would release Dr. McKay once he had learned to respect the sun the Ancestors placed in the sky."
John grimaced. "Yeah, well, I think maybe we won't wait for that. Stand by, Major, we're coming through."
The forest canopy was so tall and so dense it blotted out the sky. Rodney tromped along sturdily, even though he felt as though he had been walking for days. He had long since finished off the last of the red cherries and good cheese the princess and her prince had packed for his lunch, and his new boots had begun to rub blisters on his heels. "Honestly, Colonel," he muttered in frustration. "It isn't as though I didn't have better things to do with my life than march across the whole wide world looking for you."
He glanced around himself. The shadows under the trees were very dark. No birds sang; no squirrels climbed in the branches overhead. Rodney even found himself missing the company of that annoying little yellow cat. He wondered if wraith lived in the dark forest, and that was an unhappy thought. He wrapped his arms around himself as he shivered, and walked on more quickly.
Then with his next step, something snapped tight around his ankle. Rodney squeaked in fright and tried to shake his foot free. It was too late. The blood rushed to his head as he was yanked feet-first into the air. The forest floor spun beneath him in wide circles. Then he was jerked to a stop. He blinked and looked upside-down into the face of a wild man.
Ronon had tattoos on his face and neck, and there were beads of wood and bone woven into his long, tangled locks. He wore a fingerbone as a necklace.
"Huh," Ronon said. "You're not a wraith."
"Well, of course not," Rodney sputtered. "I'm Dr. Rodney McKay, and I'm looking for Colonel John Sheppard. Please don't kill me."
"Not planning to," Ronon said. "You did spoil my snare, though." He pulled out a very sharp knife that glittered in the dim light of the forest.
"I thought you weren't going to kill me!" Rodney protested frantically.
Ronon didn't answer. He just used his sharp little knife to cut Rodney down. He even wrapped his fist in the waistband of Rodney's fine new pants so that he didn't hit his head on the forest floor when he fell.
It was still a hard drop. Rodney lay on the ground panting and watched as Ronon climbed the tree to reset his snare. When he had finished securing the ropes and knots, he climbed down again and carefully set a loop of rope on the ground and covered it with leaves. When everything was arranged to his satisfaction, he turned around and set off through the forest.
Rodney scrambled to his feet. "Hey! Wait a minute! Where are you going?"
"Home," Ronon said.
"You can't leave me alone in the forest," Rodney complained.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm lost, and I'm hungry, and I don't know where Colonel Sheppard is."
"You can come with me if you want," Ronon said. "But I don't know where Sheppard is either."
Rodney followed.
At length they came to Ronon's home in the great forest. There was a hammock piled high with comfortable cushions slung between two trees, and a chicken was cooking over the fire pit. Ronon scowled, but he split the chicken with Rodney anyway, and he even gave him a potato that had been roasting in the coals.
When his belly was full, Rodney asked, "How am I going to find Sheppard?"
Ronon just looked at him.
"Thank you for dinner, by the way," Rodney said belatedly. "Even if there wasn't any sour cream."
"Well," Ronon said, "I can let you have my little reindeer."
"A reindeer? Excuse me, how is that supposed to help?"
"He'll carry you to an ice castle in the frozen Yukon."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."
Ronon was imperturbable. "Take it or leave it."
"I'll take it," Rodney said quickly.
So Ronon led him through the forest until they came at last to a puddlejumper sitting under the trees. "There you go," said Ronon.
"Oh my god," Rodney exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me you had a puddlejumper?"
Ronon just raised an eyebrow. "You never asked," he said.
"What was all that nonsense about a reindeer?"
But Ronon was already walking away through the woods, and didn't bother to answer.
"Give me a flak jacket," Sheppard said when he realized there was no easy way to unlock the chains. Lorne stripped off his own. John couldn't even guess at the temperature inside the airless little greenhouse where McKay had been imprisoned. Maybe he just didn't want to know. When they had first made their way in, the humid wall of heat had almost driven John to his knees.
McKay's face was darkly flushed, and he was completely unresponsive, panting like a dog in a hot car. Although his hair was matted and stiff with old sweat, his temples and cheeks were dry. The sun glared pitilessly down on the clean glass walls, and threw blinding reflections of itself on the shiny metal chains around McKay's arms and legs.
John held the flak jacket over McKay's hanging head and nodded to Ronon, who blasted away a central support. Glass fell around them, shattering on the gravel underfoot like icicles, a cold sound in the white hot heat. The sudden breeze through the broken windows felt cool. Keller was still enumerating the symptoms and consequences of heat stroke over the radio. Seizure, circulatory failure, brain damage, death. John hoped someone else was listening to her. He couldn't, his arms and mind filled with Rodney McKay. He supported his weight as Ronon maneuvered McKay's still-manacled limbs off the ragged iron remains of the greenhouse.
"I got him," Ronon said gruffly.
McKay's body was hot and dry under clothing that was soaked with perspiration. His pulse was racing, shallow and fast, and he smelled of sickness and stale sweat. Ronon swung him up in his arms like a child. A stay length of chain rattled against Ronon's legs. It was only a dozen, maybe two dozen steps to the nearest public fountain. John climbed in first to be sure the water wasn't too cold. The midday sun had warmed the shallow marble pond. He radioed Keller to advise her shortly that the water was all right and they were getting McKay into it, and then he trusted Lorne to coordinate bringing in the medical team's puddlejumper.
Ronon came to the edge of the fountain, and John helped him shift McKay in his arms and lower his feet into the water. McKay shuddered a little, but didn't revive. John knelt in the marble pond. The fountain in the center was another sundial, this one six feet tall with water spilling across its obsidian face to splash in the pond below. "Here," he told Ronon. "I think I can support him like this."
Ronon lowered McKay into the water a bit at a time as John maneuvered so he could sit with his back against the smooth walls of the pond. The water rose up his spine, gloriously cool. Ronon helped settle McKay between John's legs, his back against John's chest. "There, see? Feels great, doesn't it, McKay?" John insisted quietly and urgently. "Cool you right off." He eased McKay down slowly until his chin was just above water level, the back of his head heavy against John's stomach. With his free hand, John scooped up cold water and patted it on McKay's hot scalp. He smiled faintly and said, "Just like a baptism, huh?" hoping that would annoy McKay enough to wake him up.
And maybe it worked, because McKay stirred slightly. Lorne was at the edge of the fountain, saying, "We've got a five-minute ETA for Dr. Keller," as McKay muttered something John couldn't make out.
"Hey," John said. "You with us, here?" and he cradled McKay's jaw gently in his hand. "Because any time you wanted to come on back--"
"Ne. It's just a bouquet of forget-me-nots," McKay said clearly. "I was really hoping for cream."
The castle seemed to fill the sky, and as Rodney flew closer, the great edifice grew ever larger in his view screen. It rose from the center of a frozen sea, with towers the color of ice reflecting the sky. He wondered what manner of defences the terrible queen said to rule here had at her disposal, and he circled the castle from far overhead, watching nervously for warheads or flying monkeys or heaven only knew what might come flying out after him.
Honestly. The things he did for that vagabond colonel.
He circled the glittering palace of ice until the sun began to set, painting the clouds and the frozen sea shades of orange and pink. The windows glowed with light, and perhaps it was only the reflection of the setting sun, but it was the first indication of life Rodney had seen since first drawing near this dreadful edifice. He swallowed hard, and wondered why he had not invited Ronon to accompany him, or Teyla and her prince, or Sam or even the little yellow cat, who had actually proven himself to be rather clever, and who would be some comfort now as he dipped closer to the icy spires. Under the surface of the frozen sea he thought he glimpsed vast shapes moving in the deeps.
Rodney panicked a bit. He pulled the nose of the puddlejumper skyward, then loathed himself for his cowardice, and aimed the jumper straight for the castle again. Ice sparkled like glass in the slanting rays of the sunset, and great hanger bay doors opened for him. Rodney didn't know if he were truly brave enough to land, thinking of the terrifying dreams of the wraith he had glimpsed in Teyla's castle, but by then it was too late, and he no longer had control of the jumper himself. An automated landing procedure like an invisible hand had taken over, and though Rodney could pound on the control panel all he liked, the jumper continued its inexorable descent into the heart of the ice castle.
The colors of the sunset faded from garish pink and orange to cold silver and blue the deeper he descended. Rodney shivered with the chill. He could see his breath, and there was frost on the jumper's front view window. Another level opened up below. Now the jumper was falling through an immeasurably vast space. If there were any boundaries, they were lost in gray mists.
Then came a light metallic clatter, like skate blades hitting the ice of a rink, and the jumper had landed. Rodney sat frozen. His greatest fear was not so much the dangers he expected to find within this castle of ice. No, what truly terrified him was the awful suspicion that he was too afraid to leave the jumper at all.
He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering and miserable. Had he truly come all this way, only to be stopped by his own fear? He had braved so much for Sheppard. Hunger and exhaustion, strangers and dreams of the wraith. Rodney shook harder. The cold leeched through the walls of the puddlejumper and seemed to wrap tendrils of ice around his very bones. Rodney imagined some far distant explorers discovering the icicle fossil that had once been Rodney McKay.
Oh, how he needed to Sheppard to slap him on the back of the head and tell him to knock it off!
Well, if he needed Sheppard, he had better go find him. Careful not to think too closely about what he was doing, Rodney lurched to his feet and opened the back of the puddlejumper to walk out into the belly of the unfathomable ice palace.
Out here, the cold was a living thing. It murmured past the collar of his shirt and ran its fingers down his back with completely unwelcome intimacy. It pinched his ears and whispered that he would never find Sheppard. Rodney stumbled and looked down. He could see dimly through the ice, miles and miles, where massive, silent things were moving in the deep.
It was too much, and he almost turned back. But as Rodney jerked his head up, he saw a dark figure on the ice ahead of him. He scarcely dared trust the evidence of his senses, but he stumbled forward doggedly across the silvery expanse. The ice crackled coldly under his soles. He stumbled and slid and crawled forward, and all the while Sheppard remained deeply bent over the pages of a book on his lap. Rodney called out to him. The distances were so vast, Sheppard did not hear. From time to time, icy mists hid him from Rodney's sight completely, but he stumbled on.
At long last, Rodney drew close enough to see what Sheppard was reading so intently. Then he forgot the cold and his fear and exhaustion.
"Oh, I do not believe you! Todd McFarlane's Spiderman was completely overrated!"
Sheppard didn't bother to look up. "I think it's pretty cool."
"What kind of a reason is that for reading a comic?"
"I don't know. Maybe the only one?"
"Huh." Rodney stopped to think about it. "Yeah. Maybe."
Sheppard glanced up, a brief smile quirking the corner of his mouth. "There might be hope for you yet, McKay."
At the sight of that smile, something strange started to happen to Rodney's heart. It began as a lovely, familiar warmth that somehow teased Rodney into smiling back at Sheppard.
"Idiot," he said, trying to cover, but Sheppard's grin just got broader, even as he bent back over his stupid comic book. Around Rodney's heart, something crackled and broke. Rodney's hands flew to his chest. "I'm having a heart attack!" he squawked, but it was only the armor of ice he used to guard his vulnerable heart from disappointment and loss. A grin from Sheppard, and his defenses melted and broke away.
The pain was sharp for an instant, and tears came to his eyes. When they spilled down his face, they washed his vision clear. There was no castle on a frozen sea, and the colonel had not flown away after a wraith queen of the icy wastes. He wasn't lost at all. Colonel Sheppard was sitting cross legged on his own little bed in his room in Atlantis, as the sun set through his windows, and he was looking at Rodney as though he thought McKay was an idiot, too, but he loved him anyway.
McKay thrashed violently in his arms. John grappled with him, trying to keep his head from going under water. Ronon was there in an instant, splashing as he dropped to his knees next to them. By then McKay had already calmed. He blinked, seeming to take in his surroundings for the first time. Ronon was ready with a canteen, which he lifted carefully for McKay while John helped him sit up. He was able to swallow a few drops before he sagged back.
"You're doing great," John said. "Keller will be here in a minute and we'll get you home. Just hang in there."
McKay nodded a little. Water splashed from the face of the sundial, sparkling in the sun as it fell. Ronon brought the canteen to Mckay's lips again, and said, "You need this. Drink it," when Rodney hesitated. Lorne and Keller with her crew were jogging across the square, the wheels of the gurney bouncing noisily over the cobblestones.
McKay struggled to turn around while John told him to be easy and sit still, until it was clear McKay wouldn't be quieted, then he gave up and helped him. When McKay could look him in the face, he smiled with cracked lips, and whispered noisily to John, "I would do anything for you."
John could see Ronon's grin out of the corner of his eye, but for once he didn't mind. He filled his palm with cool water from the fountain and let it trickle onto Rodney's head. Rodney's eyes fluttered shut.
"I know you would," John murmured back, thin trails of water running across Rodney's face like cold tears. He loved Rodney, too. "So live for me, McKay. Do me a favor, and just live."


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