Man Vs. Wild Vs. Rodney, Part 2

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When Sheppard was sleeping again, and no longer shaking or bleeding or otherwise acting like he was about to die, Rodney went back to work on his saltpeter.

“I could use a few extra hands here,” he said out loud. “Teyla’s and Ronon’s specifically.” The liquid in the pot had been boiling for at least a half an hour. He pulled it off the fire, then spread the last clean towel on the shelf over the empty bucket. He dumped the alcohol into the hot, manure-strained liquid, then strained this liquid into the new container. As he poured, he saw white crystals begin to collect at the top.

“Finally,” he huffed. The saltpeter and pepper smoke bombs had seemed like a great idea two hours earlier, but he’d forgotten how long it took to make from scratch. The fact that they could potentially be attacked by the banana growers again wasn’t helping matters. The straining cloth had to dry out now, which would take another hour at least.

Rodney stood, bouncing on his toes. He was hot and tired and hungry, but all of a sudden, he found he couldn’t sit still. How long would it take for their attackers to track them down? He was surprised they hadn’t come looking already. He checked the LSD again, but no one else was approaching them. Maybe they figured they didn’t need to waste time and energy looking for them, knowing they’d catch them at the gate eventually. If it was Rodney, he’d just camp out there and wait for them to show up. Or maybe they weren’t after them at all. That led to all kinds of other questions Rodney couldn’t even begin to answer, so he shoved them all to the side to concentrate on the tasks at hand.

Sheppard groaned and mumbled something about more mint. Rodney fed him two more leaves, then started pacing the room. As soon as the saltpeter was done, he’d build his smoke bombs and then they’d have to take off again. He eyed the pepper berries. They were strong, but there weren’t a lot of them. More would be useful.

“Sheppard,” he called out, rousing the other man. “I need to go look for some stuff. I won’t be gone long, okay?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard grunted, opening his eyes just enough to look at him before letting them slide closed again.

With a huff, Rodney stalked out of the tree hut and back into the woods. Pepper berries. He hadn’t seen any when they’d been trekking through the woods, but he hadn’t really been looking either. One of his bug repellant leaves fell off his shirt, the wilted petals dropping to the ground. The buzzing drone of the jungle enveloped him as he pressed into the thick forest growth.

“Need some more of those too,” he muttered. The other two flowers were still giving off their sickening smell. Rodney had tuned it out completely before, but now that he was thinking about it, he felt his gut twist in disgust.

He stuck to the dirt paths leading away from the hut, scouring the sides until his eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his skull. His head pounded from the heat and humidity, but eventually he found a bush of the pepper berries. He picked off a bunch of twigs with dried-out berries and wished he’d thought of grabbing a basket to carry them all in, but he’d left the hut in too much of a hurry.

With a flare of impatience, he folded up the bottom of his shirt and used it as a makeshift basket, carrying as many of the berry branches as he could. He took a different path back and was starting to panic that he’d gotten turned around in the woods when he spotted the ugliest purple flower he’d ever seen in his life.

“I know you!” he crowed, then snapped his jaw shut when the sound echoed through the woods around him. Ronon had regaled them with stories about this flower, how he’d used the sap to knock out a Wraith. Rodney had refused to believe him until Ronon had taken a handful of the buds and stalks back to Carson, and the doctor had gone giddy with excitement at the sedative properties of the sap.

“What would Ronon do?” he mused. “Pepper bombs. Poisoned darts.” Using one hand, he carefully dug up two of the flowers and set them on top of his pile of pepper berry twigs, his mind racing already. He had Sheppard’s knife, which he could use to carve out thin darts easily enough. He also had that stupid nasogastric tube in his vest pocket, the last remains of his medical supplies not torn away by the sniper bullet.

“Not so useless now,” he said. He walked faster through the woods, the urge to hurry and get this plan going overcoming his fatigue and fear. When he spotted the tree hut, he broke out into a run, pounding up the stairs and bursting through the door.

“Sheppard!” he called out.

Sheppard moaned but didn’t open his eyes, staying stubbornly asleep. Rodney thought he should probably try to keep him awake given his earlier violent encounter with a rock to the head, but he couldn’t do that and work on his weapons. Getting home took priority. He dropped his supplies on the counter and set to work on his darts. Another hour passed, but when he was done, he’d crafted a half dozen poison darts that he wrapped in the instructions for the nasal gastric tube, a dart blower using the tube taped to a relatively straight stick, and two fist-sized smoke bombs in the dirtied towels, filled with crushed pepper berries and fuses soaked in the remains of the alcohol.

“This better work,” he grumbled. He checked his watch, seeing that they still had four hours before Atlantis would think to check in with them. No banana growers had appeared on the LSD, reinforcing Rodney’s belief that all of them were going to be waiting to kill them at the gate.

He loaded his pockets with the darts and dart blower, then emptied the net bag of garlic and carefully set his bombs inside that.

“Smells…Tex Mex…” Sheppard mumbled.

Rodney moved toward him. “Pepper bombs,” he announced, triumphantly. Sheppard didn’t bother opening his eyes, and Rodney felt some of his confidence slip. He knelt down, pressing a hand against Sheppard’s forehead then checking the garlic bandage again, glad to see the bleeding had stopped.

“John?”

Sheppard sighed, peeling open his eyes to look at him. He looked horrible-all gray and sweaty, the effort of keeping his eyes open almost too much to handle. How the hell was Rodney supposed to get him to the gate like this? Maybe he shouldn’t even try. He could make a run for it on his own, get back to Atlantis and come back with the cavalry.

He shook his head. John would never do that, if their positions were reversed. And Ronon and Teyla would kill him for leaving a team member behind.

“We’re going home now, but I need to know what you’re feeling. We’ve got a long walk to the gate.”

Sheppard sighed again. “Tired,” he whispered. “Not sure…walk…”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Head,” he answered immediately. “And back…or shoulder… Hurts when I move…arm.”

“How’s your hearing?”

“What?”

He tapped Sheppard’s ear, the one he’d had trouble with before. “Your hearing?”

“Ringing,” Sheppard breathed out.

Rodney nodded, reaching a decision. Using Sheppard’s knife-and vowing to buy himself one of these as soon as he got back to Atlantis-he cut out a square of fabric from the sheet on the bed. He sat Sheppard up, tying the arm on the injured armpit side up into a sling. He gave Sheppard the last few sips of water from the canteen, then let him adjust to being upright while he refilled the canteens from the pump outside.

Within minutes, he returned. He clipped both canteens to the front of his belt, then struggled to get Sheppard standing. It look a lot of heaving grunts and groans, but eventually they were both upright, swaying in the center of the tree hut.

“McKay-”

“Don’t say it,” Rodney snapped. “If you’re going to say you can’t do this, or I should just leave you here, I don’t want to hear it.”

Maybe that’s what he was going to say; maybe it wasn’t. Sheppard never finished his sentence, and Rodney tugged him forward, out of the house and down the stairs. He kept the LSD in one hand as they walked, pinpointing the general direction of the gate and trudging back into the forest.

Their progress toward the gate seemed to stumble to a halt every few feet. They’d barely made it out of the hut when he stopped to grab the coil of rope at the foot of the stairs, forced to set Sheppard down on the ground to sling it over his shoulder then pick him up again to continue their dragging gait. In the woods, the path was narrow enough that he had to turn sideways, stepping slowly over the rough terrain and dragging the colonel along behind him.

Sheppard tried. He really did. Rodney couldn’t fault him for that. Sheppard’s head hung to his chest, and sweat soaked through his shirt, but the bandage held. Every few minutes, Rodney stopped to adjust his grip, or give Sheppard a piece of Good Luck tree bark or mint leaf to chew on, or check the LSD for signs of their attackers. The silence of the woods was oppressive, and the shadows were growing deeper as the sun began to set.

The only plus was the bugs. As afternoon slid into early evening, the bugs suddenly disappeared. The bug repellant flowers no longer smelled like anything, so Rodney stopped again to rip what was left of those off his and Sheppard’s shirts. He drank some of the water, and tried to get Sheppard to do the same, but the colonel groaned, turning his head away instead.

Their plodding course took them along a weaving path that led to the gate from the opposite direction they’d originally come, and the closer they got, the more Rodney’s heart started to pound. With Sheppard hanging off his shoulder, he was overcome with a sense of utter alone-ness. This wasn’t like other offworld crises, even ones that involved Ancient tech and him pulling a solution out of his ass at the last minute to get the team home.

This was…all his. Every element depended on him. His smoke bombs, his ability to distract and fight the guards, his memory of medical treatments and botany and primitive fighting techniques. His ability to carry Sheppard. All of it-his plan.

“I can do this,” he whispered into Sheppard’s hair. “Five years on your freakin’ team, I better have learned something.”

A flock of birds scattered into the sky ahead of his with a loud squawk and Rodney dropped to the ground. Ronon would know what those birds meant instinctively. Sheppard fell next to him and curled into a ball without a word, and Rodney wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. Birds-they’d been startled. Birds screeched and fled when they were startled, that’s what Ronon would have concluded.

At what, though? Something big. It had sent at least thirty birds into the sky, based on the brief glimpse Rodney had gotten of them and the echoing caws.

“The gate,” he breathed out. “Someone activated the gate.” He poked Sheppard in the shoulder. “We’re getting close.” He held a hand to his radio, half hoping Atlantis had dialed in earlier, but after several moments, nothing happened, and his brief flash of relief sank back into lonely despair. He pulled out the LSD, and this time at least a dozen dots appeared on the screen.

“We have to get off the trail,” he whispered, even though the people around the gate were far enough away that they wouldn’t have heard him. “Sheppard? Come on.”

He grabbed Sheppard’s shoulder and rolled him on his back. Sheppard’s face was scrunched up in pain, and Rodney noticed his breathing had worsened, sounding loud and rattling in the quiet woods.

“Shit, I took too long. There’s that window-that golden hour thing. Carson told us about it. Shit, shit, shit.”

He was digging under Sheppard’s arms, lifting him up and dragging him farther off the path and deeper into the woods. He propped him against a tree, and Sheppard flailed one hand weakly, patting Rodney’s arm. “S’okay,” he mumbled. “Did good.”

“No, don’t say that. Don’t give up.”

“Not…giving…” He threw his head back, unable to finish his sentence and clawed at his chest. “Something…wrong…harder to…breathe…”

“I know,” Rodney said. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” He pulled out the LSD again and saw most of the dots were moving away, taking the path that led to the village-the one he and Sheppard had originally taken. “I didn’t think the banana growers traveled offworld very much.”

“Maybe…not banana…growers…”

That made more sense than the villagers suddenly turning against them. “Maybe I don’t hate the banana growers,” he muttered.

Sheppard coughed, a wet slapping sound that ended in a groan. Rodney shook himself out of his thoughts. Regardless of who was attacking them, their problem remained the same. Their goal was the same. He had to get Sheppard back to Atlantis. He glanced one last time at the LSD and saw four dots milling around the gate.

“Okay, I can do this. I can fight them. I’m…I’m trained for this.” He eased Sheppard back up to his feet and dragged him off the path, deeper into the woods. Spotting a large tree that had fallen over, he set Sheppard down at its base.

“Decoy,” he said. Sheppard was conscious but all of his concentration was directed inward on the battle to continue pulling in air. He didn’t respond, but Rodney didn’t really expect it.

He dug out the rain poncho, then grabbed a wide log with two branches splitting off the top. He draped the coat over the branches and stared at it. It didn’t really look like much. He fished through his vest pockets and pulled out the emergency blanket, balling it up and stuffing it into the hood of the poncho. With a head, it vaguely resembled the shape of a person.

He was ready. He took a deep breath, feeling fear quiver through his chest. “I can do this,” he said again. He knelt down next to Sheppard and shoved the handgun into his limp fingers. “Here’s the gun. If a bad guy comes, shoot him.”

Sheppard’s eyes were still closed, his jaw clenched tight. He shook his head. “No,” he grit out. “You need…gun…”

“If I shoot the gun off, every freak on this planet will come running straight for me. Shooting is the absolute last resort, got it? We have to do this as quietly as possible.”

Sheppard nodded, tightening his grip on the weapon slightly.

“I’ll be right back.”

Rodney was pleased with the way he sounded. Confidant, like he’d been born to fighting his way through alien planets to get to the gate. He checked his smoke bombs and made sure his matches were within easy reach. He stuck the darts and dart blower in his other pocket, making sure he could grab them without pricking a finger and knocking himself out-assuming that’s what the darts were going to do in the first place. He shoved back doubt at their efficacy and took another deep breath. A sense of panic in his stomach was making him want to throw up.

“I am Ronon,” he said, facing the woods. “I am Teyla and Sheppard. I am a warrior.”

He walked forward carefully, one foot in front of the other, conscious of every scraping step and snapping twig. Sweat dripped down his forehead and into his eyes.

“I will fight the guards and knock them out and then go back and get Sheppard. And Sheppard will be fine. And we will go through the gate, and I will be hailed as a hero, because I am a warrior. The most brilliant warrior in the entire universe, and… and I really need to stop talking out loud before someone hears me.”

He took another deep breath then snapped his jaw shut. Fear and adrenaline pumped through him, and the mannequin decoy in his hands shook. He saw a break in the trees ahead of him and he froze. The gate. It sat in a small clearing, and the dots on the LSD screen materialized into four large, rough looking men wandering back and forth across the clearing. Definitely not the banana growers.

He crept forward, planting his mannequin decoy against a small tree. The rope was still looped over his shoulder and across his chest, and he tied the mannequin to the narrow trunk then unwound the rope. He backed up, giving himself a good fifteen feet of space between his hiding spot and the decoy. He pulled out his smoke bombs and darts next, then set out a dozen matches.

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered. He paused a moment, feeling the oppressiveness of the woods. The jungle felt suddenly alive around him, and the sense that he was a lonely bug in its midst, about to be squashed out of existence, threatened to paralyze him. He flashed to Sheppard, alone somewhere behind him and struggling to breathe, and the image broke the spell.

“I am Team Sheppard,” he announced. He held the rope taut then hollered toward the clearing.

The guards snapped their heads in his direction and he hunkered down. He tugged on the rope, shaking the small tree and his decoy enough for the guards to spot it. With a shout, they started running toward him.

Rodney dropped the rope and grabbed a match, lighting it and holding it with shaking hands. The fuse erupted in flame and he tossed it toward the mannequin in the direct path of the guards. Time warped, at once moving too fast and not fast enough. He lit the other smoke bomb and threw it just as the first guard reached the tree line.

“Over there!” the man yelled, turning toward Rodney.

And then the first bomb went off. It blew up with a puff of smoke, filling the trees. Seconds later, he heard the first guard scream and gag, choking on the crushed pepper berries. By the time the other two guards realized what was happening, the second smoke bomb went off.

“It worked!” Rodney crowed, feeling a flash of triumph run through him. His eyes began to wander as some of the pepper blew toward him, cutting off his victory moment. He grabbed the darts and scampered back into the trees, away from the burning pepper smoke.

Two guards were down on the ground, and another one was crawling away. He pulled out his dart blower, tasting plastic and dirt as he blew out. He didn’t see the dart sailing through the smoke, nor did he have any conception of how far they would travel. He loaded another one, crawled forward and blew out again.

It took four more attempts before he finally saw the needle thin twig stick in the guard’s arm. The smoke and pepper were still floating in the air, and his eyes watered. He retreated again, resisting the urge to cough at the burning sensation in his throat and lungs. The guard he’d nicked with the dart stood up then swayed, stumbling a few feet before falling backward. He sat there, shaking his head, now oblivious to the smoke wafting over him, or the other two guards choking and gagging on the ground a few feet away.

He ran back, far enough away from his smoke bombs that he could wipe the tears from his eyes. He pulled out the LSD, seeing three dots. One of the dots was moving fast, not directly toward Sheppard’s dot but close enough that he’d spot him in a few minutes.

The fourth man had not run into the smoke bombs like the other three. Rodney started running, keeping the LSD in front of him and watching the fourth guard get close to Sheppard. When the two were within feet from each other, the moving dot stopped, and he imagined the guard staring at Sheppard in surprise, then glee. Adrenaline fueled Rodney’s muscles as he ran, but it was tempered by a helplessness that he was too late. After all of his work and planning, Sheppard would die.

He was close to Sheppard’s position when he heard a gunshot go off, the sound banging through the trees so loud that Rodney dropped instinctively to the ground. He crawled forward through the trees and saw the fourth guard holding a long machete knife over his head. Rodney’s gun was smoking, but even as he watched, it dropped from Sheppard’s grasp.

The guard stared at Sheppard for another long moment, then dropped his knife. The rest of him went boneless and he slid to the ground, the look of utter shock in his eyes and face frozen by death. Rodney scrambled forward when Sheppard slid sideways.

“John!” he called out.

Sheppard’s lips were turning a dusky blue color, and his chest jerked as he tried to breathe. The wheezing sound coming from him told Rodney that at least some air was still getting in, but clearly it was not enough. Sheppard stared at him wide-eyed, open fear on his face.

Rodney didn’t wait. He dropped his remaining darts and threw Sheppard over his shoulder, adrenaline giving him super-human strength. They were out of time. The other attackers would have heard the gunshot, and Rodney figured he had minutes to get Sheppard through the gate and to medical help before it was too late anyway.

Hardly noticing the weight of Sheppard’s limp body across his shoulders, Rodney surged forward, through the trees and across the clearing to the DHD. As the gate exploded to life, he heard shouts behind him, but he leapt forward without glancing back, his grip on his teammate tight as the cold wave of the wormhole enveloped him and carried him swiftly to the Alpha site.

Sheppard was propped up in the infirmary bed, one arm in a sling and pillows padding his back and under his arm. His head had lolled to the side and he was snoring lightly. Rodney tiptoed forward, attracted by an X-ray picture of ribs, shoulder blade, and humerus on the monitor next to the bed. A bright white triangular spot against the shoulder blade drew his attention, and he leaned forward, studying it.

“Hey.”

He jumped at the sound of Sheppard’s raspy voice next to him, his heart beating frantically. He turned to the colonel, scowling at him and feeling his cheeks burn at his reaction.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he hissed.

Sheppard smiled. He looked exhausted but not in pain-a testament to the pharmacy of drugs running through his system since Rodney had dragged him home the day before.

“That the bullet from your armpit wound?” he asked, and now that they were home safe, and Sheppard had made it through surgery, and there was no doubt they’d both survive, he was going to run with this whole “armpit” thing for as long as it would carry him.

Sheppard rolled his eyes and sighed. “Not the whole bullet-it was a ricochet of a fragment. Entered the side of my chest, skipped along my rib, and then embedded itself in front of my shoulder blade. I got lucky, actually, that the bullet didn’t veer off in some weird trajectory.”

“So what’s with the tube hanging out of your chest?”

Sheppard scowled. “Stop staring at me.” He squirmed in the bed with a grimace.

Rodney turned back to the photo, the grin faltering a little. He would tease Sheppard endlessly about the armpit wound, but staring at the bullet fragment on the X-ray was sobering. He could just make out the faint outline of the lung and minute cracks in the ribs. The surgery to get the bullet out had caused almost as much damage as the bullet itself.

On the table next to the bed, a small clear plastic container held a piece of metal. Rodney held it up, shaking it. “This the bullet fragment?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard huffed. “Why do they always think I want to keep the bullets that shoot me?”

Rodney shrugged, but he had kept the first bullet that he’d been shot with. It was in drawer somewhere in his lab. A memento to his bravery. Or something. He wasn’t sure why he’d kept it, but it had seemed like something significant enough to keep.

“We figure out why the banana growers hate us?”

Rodney set the container back on the table and pulled up a chair. “Lorne sent a couple of Marine squads through to figure out what was going on. Turns out it wasn’t the banana growers, as I suspected.”

“You did not.”

“I did so-later, anyway, when I saw they were using the gate. Turns out it was some group of scavengers that moves from planet to planet pilfering for supplies. They’d hit Banana World a few hours before we showed up and taken most of the villages around the gate hostage. By the time we waltzed through, they were taking potshots at all the villagers they hadn’t caught in their initial roundup.”

“Thought we were escaped villagers?”

“Yep. The banana growers still like us. In fact, they now love us. The Marines chased the scavengers back through the gate, then freed the villages.” Rodney slunk down in his chair, leaning his head back on his hands and throwing his feet up on the edge of Sheppard’s bed. “We’ve been regaled with many bananas. The cooks are going nuts right now trying to figure out how to use all of the fruit before it goes bad.”

“John, you are awake!”

Rodney and Sheppard twisted around as Teyla walked up to them. She looked a little pale still from her own bout of illness, but her eyes lit up at Sheppard’s smile. She grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers. Behind her, Ronon came in carrying two chairs he’d snagged from the waiting room area.

“Hey, guys,” Sheppard said.

It took a few minutes for them to settle down in the chairs around Sheppard’s bed. Rodney sat up, dropping his feet to the ground and couldn’t help grinning. His team-all four members-together like they should be.

“Oh, I just remembered,” he said, standing up. He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out Sheppard’s knife. “I wanted to return your knife. It came in very handy, by the way. I need to get one of those.”

“I’ve been trying to get you to get one of those for years now, but you were afraid of cutting off a finger.”

“I was not. And you’ve never once suggested I get a huge machete knife.”

“Let me see that,” Ronon asked, reaching over the bed to grab Sheppard’s combat knife.

“That is hardly a machete,” Sheppard said, frowning.

“Rodney, we have read your mission report but we would like to hear the story for ourselves.”

“Really?” he squeaked. At Ronon and Teyla’s nod, he sat down and cleared his throat, running them through the events of the day before. Sheppard threw in a few comments but listened just as intently as the others, and Rodney realized that while the colonel had been with him the whole time, he’d been too out of it to realize everything that had taken place.

Teyla was thrilled at Rodney’s use of the garlic, mint, tree bark, and smelly flowers, and Rodney left out completely his failed attempt at finding the grass for upset stomachs. Ronon grinned like a schoolboy when he heard about the poisoned darts, and he and Sheppard grilled him on how he’d made the smoke bombs, exchanging mischievous glances after his third rundown of the necessary materials and instructions. All three of them grew quiet, listening intently as Rodney described the final battle and run for the gate.

“You did good, McKay,” Ronon finally said.

Rodney sat up, taking in the nods and smiles from his team. “Yes, yes I did.”

“What are you guys jabbering on about in here?” Jennifer asked, appearing from around the corner. She had a half-eaten banana in one hand and was pulling her stethoscope out with the other.

“McKay’s just telling us how he saved the day yesterday,” Sheppard answered.

Jennifer’s face brightened, and Rodney felt his heart thud in his chest. “That was pretty amazing. I’m not sure I would have been that clearheaded in the same situation.”

“Sure you would have,” Rodney said, buoyed again when Jennifer’s face brightened at his words.

Sheppard yawned then, shifting in the bed again. Jennifer finished the last bite of fruit and then waved her hands at them. “Off you go. Colonel Sheppard’s only one day out of surgery and needs his rest.”

They stood, grumbling, letting the chairs scrape across the floor. Ronon grabbed one of the waiting room chairs, ignoring Teyla and Jennifer’s pleas to grab the other one while he was at it. As Rodney stood, he felt a hand on his wrist, and he glanced down to see Sheppard had grabbed a hold of him.

“Rodney,” he said, his voice quiet. “You really did do good out there. Thanks.”

The look of utter sincerity on his face was a little unnerving. Rodney was not used to such complete honesty from his teammate. Had to be the drugs. Sheppard’s pupils were a little wide, and his eyelids were starting to droop down in fatigue. Rodney smiled, his mind going blank at how to respond. He glanced around, but everyone else was busy moving the chairs around.

“I am a genius,” he finally stammered out. “After five years on your team, I better have learned something useful.”

Sheppard grinned, relaxing back onto the bed. By the time Jennifer returned to check on him, he had drifted off to sleep again. Rodney grabbed the knife Ronon had left on the edge of the bed and set it down next to the bullet fragment on the table. He squeezed Jennifer’s arm as she slid past him with her stethoscope ready, and then turned to his waiting teammates.

“Let’s go eat some bananas!”

END

Prompt: Sheppard and McKay offworld - Sheppard sick or injured and McKay having to dredge up info he has learned from Ronon or Teyla over the years on natural remedies to look after him.