The Hungry and the Dead (1/4)
Title: The Hungry and the Dead
Characters: John Sheppard, team
Word Count: 36,300
Rating: Gen/PG-13 for violence
Spoilers: Set after Season 4's "Be All My Sins Remembered"
Warnings: I hate to give any kind of warning that spoils too much of a story, but I feel obligated to say that the following contains a major character death, but I don't write death fic...so, temporary death? I promise, despite early appearances, this is not a death fic! Please give it a chance...
Summary: After a devastating accident, Sheppard's team risks it all to make things right.
Note (1): Written for the 2009 Secret Santa exchange for wildcat88. I was asked to do a pinch hit on this one and was planning to crank it out so you wouldn't have to wait too much longer. Well, I cranked it out, but the story ended up way longer than I intended, so you ended up having to wait just as long... The prompt is at the very end, and I just couldn't do it justice in anything shorter. Hope you like it!
Note (2): Huge thanks to kristen999 for letting me hash out this idea with her. Huge thanks to titan5 for her feedback and encouragement throughout the writing of this - she really kept me going on this one. And finally, huge thanks to my always awesome beta, everybetty! Thank you all!!!
The Hungry and the Dead
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.
-These Are The Clouds, W.B. Yeats
Part One
John crested the top of the hill first, his heart pounding in his chest and his breath coming out in deep puffs of condensed air. He bent over, resting his hands against his knees, and shot a glance at Ronon as he came charging up the incline behind him.
“Beat you,” John gasped out, shooting a grin at the other man.
“I let you win,” Ronon huffed back. He leaned against a nearby tree and shook his legs out, looking up at the dense canopy of leaves overhead as he sucked in ragged breaths.
John shook his head, too out of breath to come up with a retort. Ronon was covered in a sheen of sweat, a sloppy grin spread out across his face. The muscles in John’s thighs burned from the exertion of sprinting up the hill, but it was the good kind of burn. The kind that stretched and pulled and pushed the limits of the human body. Blood and oxygen pumped through his veins and thrummed with a heat that condensed on his skin and dissipated into the cool autumn air.
“Water?” Ronon asked, tossing John the canteen before he had a chance to answer.
He drank deeply, reveling in the cool liquid before capping the canteen and tossing it back. “Thanks.”
It took another ten minutes for McKay and Teyla to catch up. John had seated himself on a nearby boulder to wait for them, and he watched them slowly climb the hill he and Ronon had sprinted up. McKay’s voice floated up toward him, and John smiled at the litany of complaints spilling out of the man that gradually quieted the farther he climbed. Teyla was smiling patiently but when she saw John watching them, she shot him a glare.
John’s smile grew, and it wasn’t long before Teyla grinned back. She patted McKay’s back, urging him forward and ignoring whatever he was rambling on about. John’s eyes automatically drifted to her stomach and the life he knew was growing within her. It hadn’t been that many weeks since she’d told them she was pregnant.
His smile faltered at the memory. The news had been jarring, and he was a little ashamed at his reaction now. There was no question that Teyla had put him in a difficult position and should have spoken to him sooner about her pregnancy, but he could have been…more gentle. He’d sought her out later that evening to apologize, but even now the look of shocked pain on her face when he’d exploded on her in the hallway still cut deeply, and he wasn’t sure he could do or say anything to really make it up to her.
“Glad the two of you could join us,” John said, standing up as his last two teammates finally reached the top of the hill. McKay grunted, red-faced and panting, and stumbled to the rock John had just vacated. He collapsed in a heap and proceeded to fold his arms over his knees and lay his head on them.
Teyla was not out of breath, and she swatted John on the arm. The missions that she could join them on were rare now, but this one had been the perfect situation for the team to get out together and do a little bonding. The planet was no longer inhabited, and the more dangerous wildlife nowhere in the near vicinity. It was a day hike through the woods and back with a short stop to explore the crumbled ruins of a long dead city.
John gave McKay a few more minutes to rest then pulled him to his feet and prodded him forward. He had parked the jumper in a clearing about two miles from the ruins of the abandoned city that had prompted the mission in the first place, but two miles had quickly turned into something closer to three and a half once they’d gotten on the ground. The terrain was hilly and the underbrush thick in areas, forcing them to take a weaving path to their destination versus the straight shot John had initially anticipated.
“The ruins seemed a lot closer than this,” McKay piped up from in front of him. They were walking along a fairly wide path, flat enough that McKay had caught his breath again. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”
John rolled his eyes. Get lost one time…
“Ronon is leading the way,” Teyla answered.
“Right,” McKay huffed out.
Teyla quickened her pace until she was walking by John’s side. “Do we know anything about this place?”
“Only that it’s old enough to have been around when the Ancient’s were here. Beyond that, uh…nothing.”
A pile of boulders had loomed up in the path in front of them while McKay spoke, forcing them to veer off onto a narrower path to circle the obstacle. John let Teyla go ahead of him, and he glanced around the woods for any signs of life. It was quiet, and green. Very green. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cool, fresh air.
“Is the city Ancient then?” Teyla asked.
“Didn’t look very Ancienty from the air,” John answered. As they came around the boulders and rejoined the wider path, John spotted another clearing through the trees, long yellow-golden grass wafting in the breeze.
“Ancienty?” McKay asked, glancing back at John.
John shrugged. “You know-shiny towers and all that.” Beyond the clearing, he could see a thick forested hill rising up to a plateau, and on the plateau the faint outline of the city ruins. He probably should have parked the jumper here, not that he would ever admit that out loud. McKay would-
“Sshhh!”
Ronon’s sudden hiss brought everyone to a standstill. John raised his P-90 and flipped the safety off, cringing as McKay’s loud whisper cut through the woods.
“What is it?”
John scanned the trees for whatever it was Ronon had spotted. He reached a hand out to grab McKay and pull the scientist behind him when the woods suddenly erupted with noise. John ducked and spun around, feeling more than seeing his teammates do the same. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of dark clothes through the leaves, and then a half dozen men exploded out of the brush, weapons raised. John heard Ronon’s gun power up as the men rushed them, spears and knives raised over their heads.
They collided, thrust suddenly into hand-to-hand combat. John didn’t have time to fire his weapon before one of the men was on top of him. They crashed to the ground and rolled, and John used the momentum to continue moving away from the knife the other man was still swinging toward him. He scrambled to his feet as his attacker jumped to his and took another swipe at John with his blade. John kicked out, catching the man in the knee and felt a split second of satisfaction as the man went down with a howl before a heavy weight pounded into his back.
He landed on his chest and the air whooshed out of him. He could see McKay on the ground, grappling with another hunter, and Teyla behind him swinging a spear she must have wrested from her attacker. Ronon was nowhere in sight, but over the chaos John heard the blaster fire, and a nearby bush exploded in a blaze of red. He squirmed as the man above him shifted his weight, and he turned half on his side, throwing his arm up to block the hit he knew was coming.
The man’s expression was twisted in rage, dark stringy hair falling around the unshaven face. John grimaced at the stench of unwashed bodies and fresh sweat. The man on top of him was driving a fist toward John’s head, and John twisted again, lashing out with his own fists. He caught the man in the throat with one fist and guided the punch directed at him enough to the side that it only brushed his cheek. With a scream, he threw his leg up and wrapped it around the hunter, shifting his weight until he was no longer pinned.
He rolled to his knees and spotted a knife just a few inches from his hand. He grabbed it and looked up. His first attacker was hobbling toward him, a rock raised over his head. As he lunged then dropped against another burst of fire from Ronon’s blaster, John caught a flash of movement in the air above him-a blue sphere hanging between the trees, too round to be naturally occurring. And moving. It hovered, sliding from side to side as if looking for the best vantage point to view the fight. A bead of light at its center sparked brighter.
John lifted his arm to point at the sphere, but before he could say anything, the bead expanded, enveloping his world in a flash of white.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
One second Ronon was firing his gun at the man charging toward Sheppard, and the next he was lying on his back staring up at the sky. He was still holding his blaster. He could feel its heavy weight in the palm of his hand. The forest, filled with shouts and screams only a split second before, was now utterly still.
A tree branch far above him swayed in the light breeze. He flexed his feet, curling his toes. No pain or numbness-that was a good sign. He rolled his head from side to side and then carefully lifted it up to look down the length of his body. When he saw no blood or obvious signs of injury, he rolled over onto his knees and pushed himself up.
They’d been hiking through the quiet forest all morning, and he’d seen no sign of any animals bigger than his foot. After they’d rounded the large rocks, he’d heard someone off in the bushes next to them at the same as he’d smelled them, and he’d had just enough time to warn the others when a half dozen men swarmed around them. The men had been armed but not with anything that could withstand his gun. He shook his head; they’d been winning. He’d seen Teyla take the one attacking her out and move to help McKay, who’d managed to hold his own for longer than Ronon would have expected.
Sheppard had taken out one guy before being tackled by a second, but he’d managed to get the upper hand on him, too. Ronon had spun around to see the first guy dive toward Sheppard again and he had dropped him with a single shot, and then…
Then nothing.
Then he’d woken up staring at the trees. He jumped to his feet, searching for his teammates and saw McKay rolling onto his side a few feet away. Through the trees, Ronon saw the large clearing with the outline of the ruins on the hill above it. The men who’d attacked them-all six of them-were sprinting across the grass. While he couldn’t see their faces, from behind they looked terrified, running at full speed without a single glance behind them.
“Everyone okay?” he called out.
“What the hell was that?” McKay asked. He’d rolled from his back to his side to his knees, and was now gingerly pushing himself up. “Ow, my head.”
McKay had a smudge of dirt along his cheek but no apparent bruises or knife wounds. Or spear wounds. The men who’d attacked them had been hunters. Had the team scared off their prey and they’d attacked in retaliation? It seemed an odd response, but Ronon had run into plenty of situations that didn’t make logical sense to him but seemed perfectly normal to the people whose world he was on. Except that both Sheppard and McKay had said this world was uninhabited. He was sure Sheppard had run a scan of the planet as they’d emerged from the space gate just to be on the safe side.
“Teyla?” he called out, feeling a pang of apprehension. He couldn’t see her, and he realized he and McKay were a few feet off the wide path. She and Sheppard must have stayed on the path while he and McKay had ended up in the deeper underbrush off to the side.
“I am fine,” she called out, and Ronon felt relief flood through him. He knew Teyla could fight off anyone as well if not better than him, but her pregnancy added an extra element of risk and he wasn’t sure how to take that into account yet.
He heard her moving around behind the tree trunk and he glanced back at the clearing. The hunters were on the far side now, almost too small to pick out if he hadn’t known they were there. McKay was standing up and wincing as he pressed his hand to the back of his head.
“John?” Teyla’s voice floated through the woods, now utterly quiet once again.
“Well, that’s just a pleasant addition to my day,” McKay mumbled, still rubbing his head.
Ronon grinned. McKay was fine. He stepped toward the clearing, wondering if he should pursue their attackers, but he stopped when he heard Teyla again.
“John?”
Sheppard didn’t answer. Was he hurt? He might have bumped his head like McKay appeared to have done. Ronon didn’t feel any worse after the fight, not even bruised. He made his way toward Teyla and Sheppard, following the faint sounds of rustling clothes.
“John! Ronon!”
Fear blossomed in Ronon’s chest, and he felt his heart rate pick up. He ran around the tree trunk and saw Teyla on her hands and knees, bending over Sheppard. Sheppard was on his side facing away from him, but even as he approached, Teyla rolled him onto his back and pressed her ear to his face.
“He’s not breathing!” she cried out as Ronon dropped to Sheppard’s other side. He heard McKay running through the bushes toward them. Teyla’s fingers were digging into the side of Sheppard’s neck and Ronon blanched at the gray pallor. “No pulse. There is no pulse.”
“What? How did that happen?” McKay dropped to his knees at Sheppard’s feet.
“CPR. We must-”
“On it,” Ronon answered. Panic thrummed just below the surface but he forced it back. He tugged on Sheppard’s thick tac vest but the zipper stuck halfway down. Without thinking, he drew his knife and sliced through the thinner material on the side of the vest and pulled it away. Teyla had moved closer to his head and was tilting it back as she prepared to breathe for him. The knife ripped through the fabric of Sheppard’s t-shirt, starting a tear, and Ronon used his hands to rip it off and bare his chest just as Teyla breathed out.
His eyes raked across Sheppard’s body-no blood, no obvious injuries. Sweat was dripping from Ronon’s forehead and he hadn’t even started working. Sheppard’s ribcage expanded then dropped, then expanded and dropped again as Teyla gave her two rescue breaths. They waited for a response, but when Sheppard continued to lie limp and lifeless beneath their hands, Ronon pressed his fingers into his chest, finding the edge of the sternum. The first aid and CPR classes he’d had to take soon after he’d come to Atlantis slammed into him, and he heard the medic’s even tone explaining each step.
He began compressions, intertwining his fingers and forcing his eyes away from Sheppard’s face. Ronon had seen plenty of dead bodies, first as a soldier on Sateda and then as a runner, and Sheppard looked dead. Was dead. He bent his head forward and let his hair fall around his face. If he couldn’t see Sheppard, then this was no different than doing compression on the test dummies he’d trained on.
“Rodney, the jumper! We need to get him to Atlantis.”
McKay started at Teyla’s voice and jerked to his feet. “Okay.”
“Hurry!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Go,” Ronon breathed out to Teyla. He sat back on his heels but kept his hands over Sheppard’s chest. Ronon glanced up at McKay, who was backing up and digging into his vest for his life-signs detector. “McKay, be careful out there. I’d come with you but…”
“No, stay here. Help Teyla,” McKay answered. He glanced down at the life-signs detector and grimaced at whatever the screen was showing him.
“Hurry, Rodney!” Teyla said as she sat up.
Ronon didn’t see the scientist spin around and run back in the direction of the jumper, his concentration once again focused on pumping Sheppard’s chest. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. He counted softly to himself, glancing up on the fifteenth one and signaling to Teyla to breathe. Sheppard’s skin, if anything, looked paler, and Ronon felt a cold, almost numb sensation sweep through him.
“Sheppard, buddy-come on!” he urged. His hands rose slightly as Teyla filled Sheppard’s lungs, and he bit back the urge to shake the unresponsive man, as if he could bring him back through sheer willpower.
He pumped again. The muscles in his arms were tense, and the adrenaline inundating his system wanted him to move faster. He chanted an old training cadence under his breath, using the rhythm of the words to keep his compressions on track. He paused just long enough for Teyla to give two rescue breaths, then began the metrical dance again.
“Come on, Sheppard,” he whispered. He’d lost track of how much time had passed, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Teyla breathed two more times and sat up. She dug her hands into the pulse point in Sheppard’s neck then looked at Ronon and shook her head.
“Switch,” she called out.
Ronon slid up to Sheppard’s head immediately, and now he had to look at his friend’s face. Sheppard’s eyelids were closed, the muscles in his face relaxed in death. His skin was pale gray but darker under his eyes, and his mouth hung slightly open. Teyla picked up the chest compressions in a steady rhythm, and Sheppard’s head rocked with the movement.
When she stopped, Ronon bent down automatically, tilting Sheppard’s head back and pinching his nose. He covered his friend’s mouth with his own and breathed in one fluid motion, seeing Sheppard’s chest rise out of the corner of his eye. Teyla’s hands rested lightly on his chest, not quite covering the growing bruises from their resuscitation efforts.
He breathed again and then jerked his head toward Teyla. Sheppard’s head lolled to the side as she began another set of compressions and Ronon leaned down, his lips almost brushing Sheppard’s ear.
“Breathe, buddy. You can do this. Breathe, John, breathe.”
He whispered the desperate words over and over again. Somehow Sheppard would hear him, and he would fight. Sheppard always fought. He fought more than any other man Ronon had ever met. At Teyla’s nod, he breathed again, feeling warm skin beneath his hands and lips despite the corpse-like pallor. As he lifted his head, he found himself staring into his friend’s face. The woods seemed to disappear around them, spinning into nonexistence. It was just him, and Teyla, and Sheppard. Ronon peeled back Sheppard’s eyelids and shuddered at the sightless, empty gaze staring back at him. He pressed his fingers into Sheppard’s eyes, drawing the lids closed again and turned away, sick.
“Ronon?” Teyla was panting through another series of compressions and Ronon looked up at her. Sweat poured from her face, her cheeks flushed red from the exertion of CPR. He filled Sheppard’s lungs again with precious air expelled from his own and had to close his eyes when the forest floor suddenly tilted around them.
Breathe. He had to breathe, not just for Sheppard but for himself as well. He dragged an arm across his forehead at the sweat dripping down his face and dug his fingers into Sheppard’s neck.
Nothing.
He shifted his hand, pushing harder under his friend’s jaw then moving it down his neck into lax muscles. If anyone were to suddenly walk up on them, they’d probably think he was choking the life out of the man on the ground. He shook his head. What was he doing wrong? Why couldn’t he find a pulse?
“Anything?” Teyla’s voice was high, ringed with the same desperation twisting through Ronon.
“No, nothing!”
They switched again. “Dammit, Sheppard. Don’t give up!” Ronon yelled as he pounded against Sheppard’s chest. He felt the ribcage give more than it had been doing before and wondered if either he or Teyla had broken a rib. Probably. It was impossible to do CPR correctly and not break a rib.
But they weren’t doing it correctly. They couldn’t be. Sheppard still wasn’t breathing.
“How long has it been?” Teyla was breathing hard, her hands pressed against the ground on either side of her, trying to keep her upright. She’d gone from flushed to too pale, and Ronon worried she was about to pass out on him.
“Don’t know,” he answered being compressions. When he reached the end of his set, he tapped his radio. “McKay-”
“Running, I’m running,” McKay’s breathless voice came across immediately. His voice jarred at every frantic stride.
Teyla sat up and Ronon resumed the rhythmic abuse of pounding his hands into Sheppard’s sternum.
Too long, too long, too long. The words echoed through his mind, setting the rhythm for every blow, every crunch. The bruise was a puddle of ink, growing darker and spreading as the seconds ticked past. Another rib gave, and Ronon grimaced at the muted crack under his palms.
“Rodney, there is a clearing just a few steps from here.”
“I remember.”
“Bring the jumper here.”
“Is Sheppard okay?”
Ronon heard the conversation but couldn’t focus. The words tumbled around him, lost in the battle beneath his palms.
“Guys? How is he? Please tell me he’s okay.”
Ronon’s arms folded on him and he pitched forward, hitting the ground on the other side of Sheppard’s body with his face. He grunted, pushing himself up again on shaking arms. The muscles in his neck and back burned. The flames ran across his shoulders, down his biceps and to his forearms, mocking his weakness.
“Still trying,” he gasped out, surprised at how badly his voice shook. Exhaustion, he thought. It’s the exhaustion.
He had no idea how long they’d been kneeling in that little grove of trees. It could have been minutes or hours. A lifetime. Teyla checked for a pulse for the umpteenth time, and shook her head. They switched places again, awkwardly now as their own bodies began to betray them and give in to the physical demands of what they were doing. Lines of sweat or tears-Ronon could not tell which-had carved paths through the dust and dirt on Teyla’s face.
The problem with doing CPR for an extended period of time was fatigue. Ronon remembered hearing that in the training class, but he hadn’t realized until now just how tired he’d become. He’d been a runner, dammit. He’d gone for days without food or sleep eluding his tireless predators. What could be more exhausting than that? He bent over, pinching Sheppard’s nose and forcing his lungs to expel air slowly into the other man.
He hadn’t moved. Sheppard hadn’t moved the entire time they’d been doing this. Were they pushing in the wrong place? Or not hard enough? Or too hard? CPR became less and less effective the longer it was performed because the person giving the CPR became less effective. Weak, Ronon had translated in his mind at the same time as he’d thought that would never be him. Someone would not die because he hadn’t been strong enough. Because he’d gotten tired.
“Guys, I’m almost there. How is he?” McKay’s voice came across in stilted gasps. He was still running.
They’d hiked for over an hour, but McKay had been moving particularly slowly today. Too many days locked up in his lab. Normally Sheppard would have egged him on, forced him to walk faster, but Ronon knew Teyla’s pregnancy had thrown him off too, and he was just as uncertain about how much he could push Teyla now that she wasn’t just Teyla. And neither of them could ask her either-they’d decided together that that conversation would just end badly for all of them.
“Is he breathing…at all? Guys? Teyla?”
“We’re a little busy, McKay,” Ronon muttered. He kept his hands on Sheppard’s head, holding it in place as Teyla pounded against his chest. He lifted his arm again to wipe the sweat off his face and grimaced at how badly his hand was shaking.
“It’s been…forty-five minutes…you guys have…been doing that for…forty-five-oh, crap.”
Ronon jerked his head up at the sudden change in tone. “McKay!”
“Ssshhh,” McKay hissed back. The radio cut out abruptly, and Ronon and Teyla sat in stunned silence.
Ronon blinked, realizing they’d stopped working on Sheppard. He swallowed, crawling forward and grabbing Teyla’s arm. He could feel her shaking under his grasp and her breathing was ragged. He glanced at Sheppard and felt his stomach flip, sudden nausea building in the back of his throat.
“We can’t give up,” Teyla whispered, but she hadn’t moved.
Ronon nudged her until she finally moved out of the way and began compressions once again. “You hear that buddy?” he yelled through the burning pain in his arms. “Fight!”
Another five minutes passed, at least. They switched again, then again. Black spots were beginning to creep around the edges of Ronon’s vision and he shook his head. He breathed in as deeply as possible and felt a modicum of relief when the fresh oxygen chased back the encroaching darkness.
“You guys?” McKay’s voice was so soft Ronon almost missed it.
“Rodney! Are you okay?” Teyla snapped out, straightening. Ronon continued to press against Sheppard’s chest, now mottled black and blue and purple. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla staring into the trees in the direction of the jumper as she listened for McKay’s response. Sheppard’s head thumped against the side of her leg every time he pushed down.
“Come on, buddy,” he muttered.
“You know how we left the jumper invisible so no one would notice it? It’s covered in leaves. I could see it perfectly outlined.”
“So?” Ronon asked, pausing to let Teyla minister two more breaths.
“So there’s a bunch of people wandering around it, poking it with sticks and spears. They look like the guys who attacked us.”
“Stay out of sight, Rodney,” Teyla whispered, frantic.
Ronon’s arms were numb all the way up to his shoulders. He hadn’t noticed when that had happened.
“Hello? Those elementary school skills of hiding from bullies are paying off again. I’m out of sight, tracking them on the life-signs detector.”
He saw his hands pressing against gray skin, saw the ribcage sink a couple of inches then flex up again. The chest and his arms moved in unison, but it was almost like he was watching it from far away. Like it was a film. Disconnected.
“Rodney, be safe. If something happens to you…we are too far away to help,” Teyla said.
There was a pause as Ronon switched places again with Teyla. He pressed his hand to Sheppard’s forehead and felt the warm skin. How fast did dead bodies lose their temperature? He gagged at the thought and turned away, burying his face into the side of his shoulder. Too fast, too fast.
“How’s Sheppard? Is he…”
McKay didn’t finish, and neither he nor Teyla answered the unspoken question. What could they say?
“I think they’re leaving! I think…shit. Never mind. They’re just circling the clearing.”
Ronon bent over again, pressing his forehead into Sheppard’s and whispering into his ear. The words tumbled out of his mouth, incoherent at best, but somehow Sheppard would hear him and understand. He had to hear him.
“What the hell? Get away from the damn jumper!”
McKay’s sudden whispered hiss erupted in Ronon’s ear halfway through a rescue breath and he jerked up. The air hadn’t even made it past Sheppard’s throat. He steeled himself and tilted Sheppard’s head back again. This time both breaths expanded in the otherwise motionless lungs.
Teyla began the battering compressions again but halfway through the set, her arms collapsed. Ronon watched her fall forward. She seemed to move in slow motion as she folded over Sheppard’s body. Once down, she did not get up, and Ronon could see her jerking as she gasped.
“Teyla?” He heard himself call out to her but couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. To move. To switch places.
“They’re leaving! I’m on my way to the jumper…I’m almost there! I’m almost…oh, God! It took me over an hour to get here...”
Ronon forced his body to crawl toward Teyla. He was on the verge of collapsing himself and the trees and bushes around him kept swimming in and out of focus. He grabbed onto Teyla’s shoulder and pulled her up.
She immediately reached for Sheppard’s neck, burrowing fingertips into his carotid artery, but Ronon already knew what she’d find. Or not find. A few seconds later, she lifted a shaking hand to brush his hair away from his face.
“Hang on, guys. I’ll be there in…in like ten minutes. No, five minutes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Through the numbness and fatigue, Ronon felt his heart begin to pound. He grabbed the hand laying in the dirt by his side, the fingers curled slightly. The black wristband was covered in dirt and small dead leaves, and he picked at the debris. They had stopped CPR, but Ronon still couldn’t catch his breath. A vise tightened around his head. Teyla was crying now, the tears streaming from her eyes and dropping from her cheeks, and Ronon felt a wall of emotions bearing down on him, battering against his chest the way he had battered Sheppard’s.
He pulled his radio out of his ear. McKay was still babbling, trying to get to the jumper and asking them what was going on, if Sheppard was okay, if they were still doing CPR. Teyla pressed her head against Sheppard’s and began to rock in silent anguish. Ronon turned away. He couldn’t watch. His grip on his own emotions was already tenuous.
And then his hold broke and snapped out of his control. He let loose a scream-a wild animal roar coiling through his gut. The sound echoed through the trees, mingling with the flaps of wings from birds startled out of a daze.
McKay’s voice was high pitched and panicked. In the silence following his scream, Ronon could hear him in the radio earpiece in his hand. Teyla had wrapped her arms around Sheppard and lifted him up, hugging him in a tight embrace. She seemed oblivious to Ronon’s screaming and McKay’s rambling.
Ronon fumbled with the ear piece and caught the tail end of McKay’s one-sided conversation.
“…at the jumper now. It will only be a couple more minutes. How is he? Is he…Are you still…”
Ronon sucked in a deep breath, wondering what he could possible say when Teyla answered instead.
“Yes, Rodney. Come as quickly as you can.”
Ronon jerked his head around in surprise. Teyla was lowering Sheppard back to the ground and tilting his head back. One of Sheppard’s arms had fallen across his chest when she’d picked him up, and she moved it to the side now. She leaned over and breathed into him.
“Teyla…” Ronon started, staring mesmerized at the lone rise and fall of Sheppard’s ribcage.
“We can’t give up yet,” she whispered back. “If Rodney returns and sees we have stopped, I do not know if he…” She shook her head. “We have to continue.”
“Teyla, he’s gone.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright. The tears had stopped and the muscles in her face had grown stiff. “I know, but for Rodney’s sake…”
Ronon tried to imagine what McKay would be thinking, what he would see when he raced back toward them. He had to know. Intellectually, he knew more about CPR than all of them combined. But if he thought they’d given up on Sheppard…
“I’m almost there. We have a defibrillator in the jumper. And a med kit.”
Ronon dragged himself back to Sheppard’s body and laid a hand on his chest. Sheppard looked like he’d been pummeled repeatedly with a club, and in a sense he had. A wave of guilt flushed through Ronon and he grabbed Sheppard’s hand.
“Sorry, buddy,” he murmured, wrapping Sheppard’s fingers around his hand. He heard the jumper fly overhead, vibrating the leaves around them, and he let the hand drop to the ground. He fingered the bruises on Sheppard’s chest, finding the correct positioning once again.
He froze, his arms held out stiffly.
“Ronon?” Teyla whispered. In his peripheral vision, he saw her glance toward the clearing where the jumper had landed but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the black bruise bleeding out under the skin around his hands.
Ronon swallowed, willing his hands to move, to pump Sheppard’s chest again like they’d done for the last hour, but nothing responded. He couldn’t move. He heard the hiss of the back hatch of the jumper open, and then McKay was pounding through the grass and underbrush toward them. Teyla reached over and pressed her hand against his, and the movement triggered his arms into motion. He pressed against the ribcage-not hard, but hard enough to look like he was still trying.
“Oh, my God.”
McKay burst through the trees, the med kit in one hand and the defibrillator in the other, but he came to a standstill at the sight of them. Ronon looked up just as McKay’s hands went lax and the bags fell at his feet.
Teyla was crying soundlessly again, and McKay staggered to Sheppard’s other side, dropping to his knees. His face was a sharp contrast to Sheppard’s-bright red from his run to the jumper. Ronon continued to pump slowly, and now that he’d started he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to stop.
“He’s…he’s…”
“Rodney, he-” Teyla started then shook her head. She too seemed unwilling or unable to let go of the hold she had on Sheppard’s head. “We could not-”
McKay swallowed, and for a second Ronon thought his teammate was going to throw up. Instead, he reached a hand out and felt for the nonexistent pulse. Ronon felt bones crackling beneath him, broken ribs grating against each other. He hadn’t bothered counting the compressions. He just kept going.
“What…what about the defibrillator? The med kit-it must have…something. Epinephrine and…and…what’s the other one? There’s another one. Epi-epinephrine.”
The first aid kit and defibrillator were only a few feet away, but no one moved. Ronon felt himself slide into a rhythm and it was almost comforting. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. As long as he kept moving, it wasn’t over.
“Atropine,” McKay said after a long pause. “Epinephrine and atropine. Defibrillator. We just have to get…get some…electrical activity-v-fib or-or-or tachycardia…we should-we have to-”
“Rodney, it has been too long.”
Teyla’s voice was soft, but it blazed through Ronon’s chest like a shotgun blast. McKay flinched, shaking his head.
“No, we can’t. We have to try. We…Move, Ronon.” McKay was suddenly staring at him and pulling on his arms, but they were lead weights, fused to Sheppard’s body. Down, up. Down, up. Down, up. McKay grabbed onto his coat and shook him. “Ronon-move!”
He was panicking, desperate. He grabbed at Ronon’s arms again but ended up with his hands over Ronon’s. Down. Up. Down. Up. McKay was trying to push faster and harder, all the while screaming at Ronon to get out of his way.
Teyla’s scream accomplished what nothing else seemed to have been capable of doing. McKay and Ronon both froze and stared at her in shock. She was trembling and looked ready to collapse, but then something in her expression shifted visibly. She crawled toward Ronon first and tugged on his arms, and Ronon was surprised to see his hands lift almost effortlessly from Sheppard’s torso. She placed a hand over McKay’s next.
“No,” he whispered.
“Rodney, stop.”
“No.”
“Rodney, please.” She tugged on his hands and they too came away without a fight. McKay fell back, his entire body deflating.
They sat around Sheppard for several minutes. A breeze wafted through the trees, cooling the sweat covering Ronon’s skin. A distant bird chirped and whistled. Ronon felt the gravity of this world pulling him down, pressing against him from all sides, and he wondered if he’d be able to stand up and walk the short distance to the jumper. He had never felt so exhausted, or so drained, in his life.
“I don’t even remember what happened,” McKay suddenly said. Ronon blinked at the memories that assaulted him-hiking, the hunters, the fight. Sheppard lying on his side, dead. He dragged a hand over his face, realizing he had no idea how Sheppard had died either. He’d just been…dead.
“We need to bring John home,” Teyla whispered.
It took two of them to carry Sheppard’s body to the jumper. He and McKay stumbled through the woods with their burden between them while Teyla picked up the discarded med kit and defibrillator case and the remains of Sheppard’s vest and t-shirt. Ronon’s arms shook the entire time. By the time they walked into the back of the jumper, he was sweating almost as much as he had been when he’d been doing CPR at full strength. They set Sheppard on the bench and Ronon straightened him out, relieved that his arms had held up and that he hadn’t dropped his friend.
McKay hovered behind him, his own uncertainty about what to do bleeding into the air. When Teyla finally stumbled into the jumper, she looked like she was on the verge of passing out, and McKay darted toward her to grab the bags out of her hands. Ronon stayed on his knees next to the bench. He’d crossed Sheppard’s hands over his stomach, and he held them in place now, not sure he could stand up even if he wanted to.
Without a word, McKay and Teyla made their way to the front of the jumper, and a second later the back hatch slid closed with a hiss. The jumper was plunged into shadow, dispelled only when McKay powered up the craft and the overhead light came on. Sheppard looked worse-if that was in any way possible-in the artificial light of the jumper. Should he cover him?
Ronon thought suddenly of what would happen when they arrived back in Atlantis-of the gaping stares as people boarded the jumper and wheeled the body of the military commander of Atlantis through the hallways. Sheppard wouldn’t want that; he’d hate the attention. His vest had been flung on the floor and Ronon reached over for it. He dug into one of the pockets and pulled out the small silvery packet that contained an emergency blanket. It would have to do.
The jumper was flying through the atmosphere as Ronon flung the blanket open. The crinkling of material seemed extra loud in the quiet space. He glanced up at McKay and Teyla’s back and was grateful to see their attention focused on the windshield in front of them. Clouds and blue skies turned to the starry vista of space. He was alone with Sheppard for the moment, maybe for the last time.
As Ronon pulled the blanket up over Sheppard’s face, the jumper shuddered, almost knocking him over. He scrambled to catch his balance and looked up again at the cockpit. Lights were flashing all over the dashboard, and McKay’s hands flew across the console in all directions. The ship shuddered again, like someone had reached out of space and grabbed their tiny craft in a fist. Alarms blared, piercing the silence.
“Rodney?” Teyla cried out.
“I don’t know!”
His hands moved faster, and a diagnostic screen popped up in front of them. Ronon could make no sense of the data scrolling by. Another rumbling jolt sent him flying backward, rolling on the ground and smacking his head into the other bench. More alarms shrieked, and he could smell something burning.
He glanced over at Sheppard and saw that one of his arms had slid off the bench and was now dangling off the side. With a pained grunt, Ronon pushed himself up and crawled over to him. The jumper was shaking continuously now, and the smell of smoke grew stronger.
“McKay!” he yelled out as he grabbed Sheppard’s arm and set it back on the bench. He kept one hand on his friend’s body as he turned toward his other two teammates.
“Initial dampeners are out. And engines!”
“Can we reach the gate?” Teyla was gripping the front console to keep herself upright. Beyond the windscreen, the stars shone calm and bright.
“I don’t-” Another wailing alarm cut through the cacophony of sound and McKay stiffened. “The proximity alarm! There’s something out there!”
“What is it?” Teyla asked, trying to lean forward to look out the windshield without falling out of her chair in the process.
“I don’t know. I can’t…Oh, God-it’s huge.”
“What’s going on?” Ronon roared as the jumper pitched to the side. He was flung forward onto Sheppard and had a brief second to realize he was crushing his friend, and then the jumper was hurled in the opposite direction. Ronon fell backward, bringing Sheppard with him. He landed on the floor of the jumper, bouncing as the ship continued to twist and tremble. Sheppard landed on top of him and Ronon latched onto him, wrapping his arms around his chest and pinning him in place. If they were going to be tossed around the jumper, they would do it together.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the alarms and screams of panic emanating from somewhere above him. When the jumper was suddenly jerked downward, it took Ronon a moment to realize he was in mid-air. He had one last thought that this couldn’t end well for any of them before the floor rushed back up and slammed into the back of his head.
TBC...
Part Two
Characters: John Sheppard, team
Word Count: 36,300
Rating: Gen/PG-13 for violence
Spoilers: Set after Season 4's "Be All My Sins Remembered"
Warnings: I hate to give any kind of warning that spoils too much of a story, but I feel obligated to say that the following contains a major character death, but I don't write death fic...so, temporary death? I promise, despite early appearances, this is not a death fic! Please give it a chance...
Summary: After a devastating accident, Sheppard's team risks it all to make things right.
Note (1): Written for the 2009 Secret Santa exchange for wildcat88. I was asked to do a pinch hit on this one and was planning to crank it out so you wouldn't have to wait too much longer. Well, I cranked it out, but the story ended up way longer than I intended, so you ended up having to wait just as long... The prompt is at the very end, and I just couldn't do it justice in anything shorter. Hope you like it!
Note (2): Huge thanks to kristen999 for letting me hash out this idea with her. Huge thanks to titan5 for her feedback and encouragement throughout the writing of this - she really kept me going on this one. And finally, huge thanks to my always awesome beta, everybetty! Thank you all!!!
The Hungry and the Dead
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.
-These Are The Clouds, W.B. Yeats
Part One
John crested the top of the hill first, his heart pounding in his chest and his breath coming out in deep puffs of condensed air. He bent over, resting his hands against his knees, and shot a glance at Ronon as he came charging up the incline behind him.
“Beat you,” John gasped out, shooting a grin at the other man.
“I let you win,” Ronon huffed back. He leaned against a nearby tree and shook his legs out, looking up at the dense canopy of leaves overhead as he sucked in ragged breaths.
John shook his head, too out of breath to come up with a retort. Ronon was covered in a sheen of sweat, a sloppy grin spread out across his face. The muscles in John’s thighs burned from the exertion of sprinting up the hill, but it was the good kind of burn. The kind that stretched and pulled and pushed the limits of the human body. Blood and oxygen pumped through his veins and thrummed with a heat that condensed on his skin and dissipated into the cool autumn air.
“Water?” Ronon asked, tossing John the canteen before he had a chance to answer.
He drank deeply, reveling in the cool liquid before capping the canteen and tossing it back. “Thanks.”
It took another ten minutes for McKay and Teyla to catch up. John had seated himself on a nearby boulder to wait for them, and he watched them slowly climb the hill he and Ronon had sprinted up. McKay’s voice floated up toward him, and John smiled at the litany of complaints spilling out of the man that gradually quieted the farther he climbed. Teyla was smiling patiently but when she saw John watching them, she shot him a glare.
John’s smile grew, and it wasn’t long before Teyla grinned back. She patted McKay’s back, urging him forward and ignoring whatever he was rambling on about. John’s eyes automatically drifted to her stomach and the life he knew was growing within her. It hadn’t been that many weeks since she’d told them she was pregnant.
His smile faltered at the memory. The news had been jarring, and he was a little ashamed at his reaction now. There was no question that Teyla had put him in a difficult position and should have spoken to him sooner about her pregnancy, but he could have been…more gentle. He’d sought her out later that evening to apologize, but even now the look of shocked pain on her face when he’d exploded on her in the hallway still cut deeply, and he wasn’t sure he could do or say anything to really make it up to her.
“Glad the two of you could join us,” John said, standing up as his last two teammates finally reached the top of the hill. McKay grunted, red-faced and panting, and stumbled to the rock John had just vacated. He collapsed in a heap and proceeded to fold his arms over his knees and lay his head on them.
Teyla was not out of breath, and she swatted John on the arm. The missions that she could join them on were rare now, but this one had been the perfect situation for the team to get out together and do a little bonding. The planet was no longer inhabited, and the more dangerous wildlife nowhere in the near vicinity. It was a day hike through the woods and back with a short stop to explore the crumbled ruins of a long dead city.
John gave McKay a few more minutes to rest then pulled him to his feet and prodded him forward. He had parked the jumper in a clearing about two miles from the ruins of the abandoned city that had prompted the mission in the first place, but two miles had quickly turned into something closer to three and a half once they’d gotten on the ground. The terrain was hilly and the underbrush thick in areas, forcing them to take a weaving path to their destination versus the straight shot John had initially anticipated.
“The ruins seemed a lot closer than this,” McKay piped up from in front of him. They were walking along a fairly wide path, flat enough that McKay had caught his breath again. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”
John rolled his eyes. Get lost one time…
“Ronon is leading the way,” Teyla answered.
“Right,” McKay huffed out.
Teyla quickened her pace until she was walking by John’s side. “Do we know anything about this place?”
“Only that it’s old enough to have been around when the Ancient’s were here. Beyond that, uh…nothing.”
A pile of boulders had loomed up in the path in front of them while McKay spoke, forcing them to veer off onto a narrower path to circle the obstacle. John let Teyla go ahead of him, and he glanced around the woods for any signs of life. It was quiet, and green. Very green. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cool, fresh air.
“Is the city Ancient then?” Teyla asked.
“Didn’t look very Ancienty from the air,” John answered. As they came around the boulders and rejoined the wider path, John spotted another clearing through the trees, long yellow-golden grass wafting in the breeze.
“Ancienty?” McKay asked, glancing back at John.
John shrugged. “You know-shiny towers and all that.” Beyond the clearing, he could see a thick forested hill rising up to a plateau, and on the plateau the faint outline of the city ruins. He probably should have parked the jumper here, not that he would ever admit that out loud. McKay would-
“Sshhh!”
Ronon’s sudden hiss brought everyone to a standstill. John raised his P-90 and flipped the safety off, cringing as McKay’s loud whisper cut through the woods.
“What is it?”
John scanned the trees for whatever it was Ronon had spotted. He reached a hand out to grab McKay and pull the scientist behind him when the woods suddenly erupted with noise. John ducked and spun around, feeling more than seeing his teammates do the same. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of dark clothes through the leaves, and then a half dozen men exploded out of the brush, weapons raised. John heard Ronon’s gun power up as the men rushed them, spears and knives raised over their heads.
They collided, thrust suddenly into hand-to-hand combat. John didn’t have time to fire his weapon before one of the men was on top of him. They crashed to the ground and rolled, and John used the momentum to continue moving away from the knife the other man was still swinging toward him. He scrambled to his feet as his attacker jumped to his and took another swipe at John with his blade. John kicked out, catching the man in the knee and felt a split second of satisfaction as the man went down with a howl before a heavy weight pounded into his back.
He landed on his chest and the air whooshed out of him. He could see McKay on the ground, grappling with another hunter, and Teyla behind him swinging a spear she must have wrested from her attacker. Ronon was nowhere in sight, but over the chaos John heard the blaster fire, and a nearby bush exploded in a blaze of red. He squirmed as the man above him shifted his weight, and he turned half on his side, throwing his arm up to block the hit he knew was coming.
The man’s expression was twisted in rage, dark stringy hair falling around the unshaven face. John grimaced at the stench of unwashed bodies and fresh sweat. The man on top of him was driving a fist toward John’s head, and John twisted again, lashing out with his own fists. He caught the man in the throat with one fist and guided the punch directed at him enough to the side that it only brushed his cheek. With a scream, he threw his leg up and wrapped it around the hunter, shifting his weight until he was no longer pinned.
He rolled to his knees and spotted a knife just a few inches from his hand. He grabbed it and looked up. His first attacker was hobbling toward him, a rock raised over his head. As he lunged then dropped against another burst of fire from Ronon’s blaster, John caught a flash of movement in the air above him-a blue sphere hanging between the trees, too round to be naturally occurring. And moving. It hovered, sliding from side to side as if looking for the best vantage point to view the fight. A bead of light at its center sparked brighter.
John lifted his arm to point at the sphere, but before he could say anything, the bead expanded, enveloping his world in a flash of white.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
One second Ronon was firing his gun at the man charging toward Sheppard, and the next he was lying on his back staring up at the sky. He was still holding his blaster. He could feel its heavy weight in the palm of his hand. The forest, filled with shouts and screams only a split second before, was now utterly still.
A tree branch far above him swayed in the light breeze. He flexed his feet, curling his toes. No pain or numbness-that was a good sign. He rolled his head from side to side and then carefully lifted it up to look down the length of his body. When he saw no blood or obvious signs of injury, he rolled over onto his knees and pushed himself up.
They’d been hiking through the quiet forest all morning, and he’d seen no sign of any animals bigger than his foot. After they’d rounded the large rocks, he’d heard someone off in the bushes next to them at the same as he’d smelled them, and he’d had just enough time to warn the others when a half dozen men swarmed around them. The men had been armed but not with anything that could withstand his gun. He shook his head; they’d been winning. He’d seen Teyla take the one attacking her out and move to help McKay, who’d managed to hold his own for longer than Ronon would have expected.
Sheppard had taken out one guy before being tackled by a second, but he’d managed to get the upper hand on him, too. Ronon had spun around to see the first guy dive toward Sheppard again and he had dropped him with a single shot, and then…
Then nothing.
Then he’d woken up staring at the trees. He jumped to his feet, searching for his teammates and saw McKay rolling onto his side a few feet away. Through the trees, Ronon saw the large clearing with the outline of the ruins on the hill above it. The men who’d attacked them-all six of them-were sprinting across the grass. While he couldn’t see their faces, from behind they looked terrified, running at full speed without a single glance behind them.
“Everyone okay?” he called out.
“What the hell was that?” McKay asked. He’d rolled from his back to his side to his knees, and was now gingerly pushing himself up. “Ow, my head.”
McKay had a smudge of dirt along his cheek but no apparent bruises or knife wounds. Or spear wounds. The men who’d attacked them had been hunters. Had the team scared off their prey and they’d attacked in retaliation? It seemed an odd response, but Ronon had run into plenty of situations that didn’t make logical sense to him but seemed perfectly normal to the people whose world he was on. Except that both Sheppard and McKay had said this world was uninhabited. He was sure Sheppard had run a scan of the planet as they’d emerged from the space gate just to be on the safe side.
“Teyla?” he called out, feeling a pang of apprehension. He couldn’t see her, and he realized he and McKay were a few feet off the wide path. She and Sheppard must have stayed on the path while he and McKay had ended up in the deeper underbrush off to the side.
“I am fine,” she called out, and Ronon felt relief flood through him. He knew Teyla could fight off anyone as well if not better than him, but her pregnancy added an extra element of risk and he wasn’t sure how to take that into account yet.
He heard her moving around behind the tree trunk and he glanced back at the clearing. The hunters were on the far side now, almost too small to pick out if he hadn’t known they were there. McKay was standing up and wincing as he pressed his hand to the back of his head.
“John?” Teyla’s voice floated through the woods, now utterly quiet once again.
“Well, that’s just a pleasant addition to my day,” McKay mumbled, still rubbing his head.
Ronon grinned. McKay was fine. He stepped toward the clearing, wondering if he should pursue their attackers, but he stopped when he heard Teyla again.
“John?”
Sheppard didn’t answer. Was he hurt? He might have bumped his head like McKay appeared to have done. Ronon didn’t feel any worse after the fight, not even bruised. He made his way toward Teyla and Sheppard, following the faint sounds of rustling clothes.
“John! Ronon!”
Fear blossomed in Ronon’s chest, and he felt his heart rate pick up. He ran around the tree trunk and saw Teyla on her hands and knees, bending over Sheppard. Sheppard was on his side facing away from him, but even as he approached, Teyla rolled him onto his back and pressed her ear to his face.
“He’s not breathing!” she cried out as Ronon dropped to Sheppard’s other side. He heard McKay running through the bushes toward them. Teyla’s fingers were digging into the side of Sheppard’s neck and Ronon blanched at the gray pallor. “No pulse. There is no pulse.”
“What? How did that happen?” McKay dropped to his knees at Sheppard’s feet.
“CPR. We must-”
“On it,” Ronon answered. Panic thrummed just below the surface but he forced it back. He tugged on Sheppard’s thick tac vest but the zipper stuck halfway down. Without thinking, he drew his knife and sliced through the thinner material on the side of the vest and pulled it away. Teyla had moved closer to his head and was tilting it back as she prepared to breathe for him. The knife ripped through the fabric of Sheppard’s t-shirt, starting a tear, and Ronon used his hands to rip it off and bare his chest just as Teyla breathed out.
His eyes raked across Sheppard’s body-no blood, no obvious injuries. Sweat was dripping from Ronon’s forehead and he hadn’t even started working. Sheppard’s ribcage expanded then dropped, then expanded and dropped again as Teyla gave her two rescue breaths. They waited for a response, but when Sheppard continued to lie limp and lifeless beneath their hands, Ronon pressed his fingers into his chest, finding the edge of the sternum. The first aid and CPR classes he’d had to take soon after he’d come to Atlantis slammed into him, and he heard the medic’s even tone explaining each step.
He began compressions, intertwining his fingers and forcing his eyes away from Sheppard’s face. Ronon had seen plenty of dead bodies, first as a soldier on Sateda and then as a runner, and Sheppard looked dead. Was dead. He bent his head forward and let his hair fall around his face. If he couldn’t see Sheppard, then this was no different than doing compression on the test dummies he’d trained on.
“Rodney, the jumper! We need to get him to Atlantis.”
McKay started at Teyla’s voice and jerked to his feet. “Okay.”
“Hurry!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Go,” Ronon breathed out to Teyla. He sat back on his heels but kept his hands over Sheppard’s chest. Ronon glanced up at McKay, who was backing up and digging into his vest for his life-signs detector. “McKay, be careful out there. I’d come with you but…”
“No, stay here. Help Teyla,” McKay answered. He glanced down at the life-signs detector and grimaced at whatever the screen was showing him.
“Hurry, Rodney!” Teyla said as she sat up.
Ronon didn’t see the scientist spin around and run back in the direction of the jumper, his concentration once again focused on pumping Sheppard’s chest. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. He counted softly to himself, glancing up on the fifteenth one and signaling to Teyla to breathe. Sheppard’s skin, if anything, looked paler, and Ronon felt a cold, almost numb sensation sweep through him.
“Sheppard, buddy-come on!” he urged. His hands rose slightly as Teyla filled Sheppard’s lungs, and he bit back the urge to shake the unresponsive man, as if he could bring him back through sheer willpower.
He pumped again. The muscles in his arms were tense, and the adrenaline inundating his system wanted him to move faster. He chanted an old training cadence under his breath, using the rhythm of the words to keep his compressions on track. He paused just long enough for Teyla to give two rescue breaths, then began the metrical dance again.
“Come on, Sheppard,” he whispered. He’d lost track of how much time had passed, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Teyla breathed two more times and sat up. She dug her hands into the pulse point in Sheppard’s neck then looked at Ronon and shook her head.
“Switch,” she called out.
Ronon slid up to Sheppard’s head immediately, and now he had to look at his friend’s face. Sheppard’s eyelids were closed, the muscles in his face relaxed in death. His skin was pale gray but darker under his eyes, and his mouth hung slightly open. Teyla picked up the chest compressions in a steady rhythm, and Sheppard’s head rocked with the movement.
When she stopped, Ronon bent down automatically, tilting Sheppard’s head back and pinching his nose. He covered his friend’s mouth with his own and breathed in one fluid motion, seeing Sheppard’s chest rise out of the corner of his eye. Teyla’s hands rested lightly on his chest, not quite covering the growing bruises from their resuscitation efforts.
He breathed again and then jerked his head toward Teyla. Sheppard’s head lolled to the side as she began another set of compressions and Ronon leaned down, his lips almost brushing Sheppard’s ear.
“Breathe, buddy. You can do this. Breathe, John, breathe.”
He whispered the desperate words over and over again. Somehow Sheppard would hear him, and he would fight. Sheppard always fought. He fought more than any other man Ronon had ever met. At Teyla’s nod, he breathed again, feeling warm skin beneath his hands and lips despite the corpse-like pallor. As he lifted his head, he found himself staring into his friend’s face. The woods seemed to disappear around them, spinning into nonexistence. It was just him, and Teyla, and Sheppard. Ronon peeled back Sheppard’s eyelids and shuddered at the sightless, empty gaze staring back at him. He pressed his fingers into Sheppard’s eyes, drawing the lids closed again and turned away, sick.
“Ronon?” Teyla was panting through another series of compressions and Ronon looked up at her. Sweat poured from her face, her cheeks flushed red from the exertion of CPR. He filled Sheppard’s lungs again with precious air expelled from his own and had to close his eyes when the forest floor suddenly tilted around them.
Breathe. He had to breathe, not just for Sheppard but for himself as well. He dragged an arm across his forehead at the sweat dripping down his face and dug his fingers into Sheppard’s neck.
Nothing.
He shifted his hand, pushing harder under his friend’s jaw then moving it down his neck into lax muscles. If anyone were to suddenly walk up on them, they’d probably think he was choking the life out of the man on the ground. He shook his head. What was he doing wrong? Why couldn’t he find a pulse?
“Anything?” Teyla’s voice was high, ringed with the same desperation twisting through Ronon.
“No, nothing!”
They switched again. “Dammit, Sheppard. Don’t give up!” Ronon yelled as he pounded against Sheppard’s chest. He felt the ribcage give more than it had been doing before and wondered if either he or Teyla had broken a rib. Probably. It was impossible to do CPR correctly and not break a rib.
But they weren’t doing it correctly. They couldn’t be. Sheppard still wasn’t breathing.
“How long has it been?” Teyla was breathing hard, her hands pressed against the ground on either side of her, trying to keep her upright. She’d gone from flushed to too pale, and Ronon worried she was about to pass out on him.
“Don’t know,” he answered being compressions. When he reached the end of his set, he tapped his radio. “McKay-”
“Running, I’m running,” McKay’s breathless voice came across immediately. His voice jarred at every frantic stride.
Teyla sat up and Ronon resumed the rhythmic abuse of pounding his hands into Sheppard’s sternum.
Too long, too long, too long. The words echoed through his mind, setting the rhythm for every blow, every crunch. The bruise was a puddle of ink, growing darker and spreading as the seconds ticked past. Another rib gave, and Ronon grimaced at the muted crack under his palms.
“Rodney, there is a clearing just a few steps from here.”
“I remember.”
“Bring the jumper here.”
“Is Sheppard okay?”
Ronon heard the conversation but couldn’t focus. The words tumbled around him, lost in the battle beneath his palms.
“Guys? How is he? Please tell me he’s okay.”
Ronon’s arms folded on him and he pitched forward, hitting the ground on the other side of Sheppard’s body with his face. He grunted, pushing himself up again on shaking arms. The muscles in his neck and back burned. The flames ran across his shoulders, down his biceps and to his forearms, mocking his weakness.
“Still trying,” he gasped out, surprised at how badly his voice shook. Exhaustion, he thought. It’s the exhaustion.
He had no idea how long they’d been kneeling in that little grove of trees. It could have been minutes or hours. A lifetime. Teyla checked for a pulse for the umpteenth time, and shook her head. They switched places again, awkwardly now as their own bodies began to betray them and give in to the physical demands of what they were doing. Lines of sweat or tears-Ronon could not tell which-had carved paths through the dust and dirt on Teyla’s face.
The problem with doing CPR for an extended period of time was fatigue. Ronon remembered hearing that in the training class, but he hadn’t realized until now just how tired he’d become. He’d been a runner, dammit. He’d gone for days without food or sleep eluding his tireless predators. What could be more exhausting than that? He bent over, pinching Sheppard’s nose and forcing his lungs to expel air slowly into the other man.
He hadn’t moved. Sheppard hadn’t moved the entire time they’d been doing this. Were they pushing in the wrong place? Or not hard enough? Or too hard? CPR became less and less effective the longer it was performed because the person giving the CPR became less effective. Weak, Ronon had translated in his mind at the same time as he’d thought that would never be him. Someone would not die because he hadn’t been strong enough. Because he’d gotten tired.
“Guys, I’m almost there. How is he?” McKay’s voice came across in stilted gasps. He was still running.
They’d hiked for over an hour, but McKay had been moving particularly slowly today. Too many days locked up in his lab. Normally Sheppard would have egged him on, forced him to walk faster, but Ronon knew Teyla’s pregnancy had thrown him off too, and he was just as uncertain about how much he could push Teyla now that she wasn’t just Teyla. And neither of them could ask her either-they’d decided together that that conversation would just end badly for all of them.
“Is he breathing…at all? Guys? Teyla?”
“We’re a little busy, McKay,” Ronon muttered. He kept his hands on Sheppard’s head, holding it in place as Teyla pounded against his chest. He lifted his arm again to wipe the sweat off his face and grimaced at how badly his hand was shaking.
“It’s been…forty-five minutes…you guys have…been doing that for…forty-five-oh, crap.”
Ronon jerked his head up at the sudden change in tone. “McKay!”
“Ssshhh,” McKay hissed back. The radio cut out abruptly, and Ronon and Teyla sat in stunned silence.
Ronon blinked, realizing they’d stopped working on Sheppard. He swallowed, crawling forward and grabbing Teyla’s arm. He could feel her shaking under his grasp and her breathing was ragged. He glanced at Sheppard and felt his stomach flip, sudden nausea building in the back of his throat.
“We can’t give up,” Teyla whispered, but she hadn’t moved.
Ronon nudged her until she finally moved out of the way and began compressions once again. “You hear that buddy?” he yelled through the burning pain in his arms. “Fight!”
Another five minutes passed, at least. They switched again, then again. Black spots were beginning to creep around the edges of Ronon’s vision and he shook his head. He breathed in as deeply as possible and felt a modicum of relief when the fresh oxygen chased back the encroaching darkness.
“You guys?” McKay’s voice was so soft Ronon almost missed it.
“Rodney! Are you okay?” Teyla snapped out, straightening. Ronon continued to press against Sheppard’s chest, now mottled black and blue and purple. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla staring into the trees in the direction of the jumper as she listened for McKay’s response. Sheppard’s head thumped against the side of her leg every time he pushed down.
“Come on, buddy,” he muttered.
“You know how we left the jumper invisible so no one would notice it? It’s covered in leaves. I could see it perfectly outlined.”
“So?” Ronon asked, pausing to let Teyla minister two more breaths.
“So there’s a bunch of people wandering around it, poking it with sticks and spears. They look like the guys who attacked us.”
“Stay out of sight, Rodney,” Teyla whispered, frantic.
Ronon’s arms were numb all the way up to his shoulders. He hadn’t noticed when that had happened.
“Hello? Those elementary school skills of hiding from bullies are paying off again. I’m out of sight, tracking them on the life-signs detector.”
He saw his hands pressing against gray skin, saw the ribcage sink a couple of inches then flex up again. The chest and his arms moved in unison, but it was almost like he was watching it from far away. Like it was a film. Disconnected.
“Rodney, be safe. If something happens to you…we are too far away to help,” Teyla said.
There was a pause as Ronon switched places again with Teyla. He pressed his hand to Sheppard’s forehead and felt the warm skin. How fast did dead bodies lose their temperature? He gagged at the thought and turned away, burying his face into the side of his shoulder. Too fast, too fast.
“How’s Sheppard? Is he…”
McKay didn’t finish, and neither he nor Teyla answered the unspoken question. What could they say?
“I think they’re leaving! I think…shit. Never mind. They’re just circling the clearing.”
Ronon bent over again, pressing his forehead into Sheppard’s and whispering into his ear. The words tumbled out of his mouth, incoherent at best, but somehow Sheppard would hear him and understand. He had to hear him.
“What the hell? Get away from the damn jumper!”
McKay’s sudden whispered hiss erupted in Ronon’s ear halfway through a rescue breath and he jerked up. The air hadn’t even made it past Sheppard’s throat. He steeled himself and tilted Sheppard’s head back again. This time both breaths expanded in the otherwise motionless lungs.
Teyla began the battering compressions again but halfway through the set, her arms collapsed. Ronon watched her fall forward. She seemed to move in slow motion as she folded over Sheppard’s body. Once down, she did not get up, and Ronon could see her jerking as she gasped.
“Teyla?” He heard himself call out to her but couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. To move. To switch places.
“They’re leaving! I’m on my way to the jumper…I’m almost there! I’m almost…oh, God! It took me over an hour to get here...”
Ronon forced his body to crawl toward Teyla. He was on the verge of collapsing himself and the trees and bushes around him kept swimming in and out of focus. He grabbed onto Teyla’s shoulder and pulled her up.
She immediately reached for Sheppard’s neck, burrowing fingertips into his carotid artery, but Ronon already knew what she’d find. Or not find. A few seconds later, she lifted a shaking hand to brush his hair away from his face.
“Hang on, guys. I’ll be there in…in like ten minutes. No, five minutes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Through the numbness and fatigue, Ronon felt his heart begin to pound. He grabbed the hand laying in the dirt by his side, the fingers curled slightly. The black wristband was covered in dirt and small dead leaves, and he picked at the debris. They had stopped CPR, but Ronon still couldn’t catch his breath. A vise tightened around his head. Teyla was crying now, the tears streaming from her eyes and dropping from her cheeks, and Ronon felt a wall of emotions bearing down on him, battering against his chest the way he had battered Sheppard’s.
He pulled his radio out of his ear. McKay was still babbling, trying to get to the jumper and asking them what was going on, if Sheppard was okay, if they were still doing CPR. Teyla pressed her head against Sheppard’s and began to rock in silent anguish. Ronon turned away. He couldn’t watch. His grip on his own emotions was already tenuous.
And then his hold broke and snapped out of his control. He let loose a scream-a wild animal roar coiling through his gut. The sound echoed through the trees, mingling with the flaps of wings from birds startled out of a daze.
McKay’s voice was high pitched and panicked. In the silence following his scream, Ronon could hear him in the radio earpiece in his hand. Teyla had wrapped her arms around Sheppard and lifted him up, hugging him in a tight embrace. She seemed oblivious to Ronon’s screaming and McKay’s rambling.
Ronon fumbled with the ear piece and caught the tail end of McKay’s one-sided conversation.
“…at the jumper now. It will only be a couple more minutes. How is he? Is he…Are you still…”
Ronon sucked in a deep breath, wondering what he could possible say when Teyla answered instead.
“Yes, Rodney. Come as quickly as you can.”
Ronon jerked his head around in surprise. Teyla was lowering Sheppard back to the ground and tilting his head back. One of Sheppard’s arms had fallen across his chest when she’d picked him up, and she moved it to the side now. She leaned over and breathed into him.
“Teyla…” Ronon started, staring mesmerized at the lone rise and fall of Sheppard’s ribcage.
“We can’t give up yet,” she whispered back. “If Rodney returns and sees we have stopped, I do not know if he…” She shook her head. “We have to continue.”
“Teyla, he’s gone.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright. The tears had stopped and the muscles in her face had grown stiff. “I know, but for Rodney’s sake…”
Ronon tried to imagine what McKay would be thinking, what he would see when he raced back toward them. He had to know. Intellectually, he knew more about CPR than all of them combined. But if he thought they’d given up on Sheppard…
“I’m almost there. We have a defibrillator in the jumper. And a med kit.”
Ronon dragged himself back to Sheppard’s body and laid a hand on his chest. Sheppard looked like he’d been pummeled repeatedly with a club, and in a sense he had. A wave of guilt flushed through Ronon and he grabbed Sheppard’s hand.
“Sorry, buddy,” he murmured, wrapping Sheppard’s fingers around his hand. He heard the jumper fly overhead, vibrating the leaves around them, and he let the hand drop to the ground. He fingered the bruises on Sheppard’s chest, finding the correct positioning once again.
He froze, his arms held out stiffly.
“Ronon?” Teyla whispered. In his peripheral vision, he saw her glance toward the clearing where the jumper had landed but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the black bruise bleeding out under the skin around his hands.
Ronon swallowed, willing his hands to move, to pump Sheppard’s chest again like they’d done for the last hour, but nothing responded. He couldn’t move. He heard the hiss of the back hatch of the jumper open, and then McKay was pounding through the grass and underbrush toward them. Teyla reached over and pressed her hand against his, and the movement triggered his arms into motion. He pressed against the ribcage-not hard, but hard enough to look like he was still trying.
“Oh, my God.”
McKay burst through the trees, the med kit in one hand and the defibrillator in the other, but he came to a standstill at the sight of them. Ronon looked up just as McKay’s hands went lax and the bags fell at his feet.
Teyla was crying soundlessly again, and McKay staggered to Sheppard’s other side, dropping to his knees. His face was a sharp contrast to Sheppard’s-bright red from his run to the jumper. Ronon continued to pump slowly, and now that he’d started he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to stop.
“He’s…he’s…”
“Rodney, he-” Teyla started then shook her head. She too seemed unwilling or unable to let go of the hold she had on Sheppard’s head. “We could not-”
McKay swallowed, and for a second Ronon thought his teammate was going to throw up. Instead, he reached a hand out and felt for the nonexistent pulse. Ronon felt bones crackling beneath him, broken ribs grating against each other. He hadn’t bothered counting the compressions. He just kept going.
“What…what about the defibrillator? The med kit-it must have…something. Epinephrine and…and…what’s the other one? There’s another one. Epi-epinephrine.”
The first aid kit and defibrillator were only a few feet away, but no one moved. Ronon felt himself slide into a rhythm and it was almost comforting. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. As long as he kept moving, it wasn’t over.
“Atropine,” McKay said after a long pause. “Epinephrine and atropine. Defibrillator. We just have to get…get some…electrical activity-v-fib or-or-or tachycardia…we should-we have to-”
“Rodney, it has been too long.”
Teyla’s voice was soft, but it blazed through Ronon’s chest like a shotgun blast. McKay flinched, shaking his head.
“No, we can’t. We have to try. We…Move, Ronon.” McKay was suddenly staring at him and pulling on his arms, but they were lead weights, fused to Sheppard’s body. Down, up. Down, up. Down, up. McKay grabbed onto his coat and shook him. “Ronon-move!”
He was panicking, desperate. He grabbed at Ronon’s arms again but ended up with his hands over Ronon’s. Down. Up. Down. Up. McKay was trying to push faster and harder, all the while screaming at Ronon to get out of his way.
Teyla’s scream accomplished what nothing else seemed to have been capable of doing. McKay and Ronon both froze and stared at her in shock. She was trembling and looked ready to collapse, but then something in her expression shifted visibly. She crawled toward Ronon first and tugged on his arms, and Ronon was surprised to see his hands lift almost effortlessly from Sheppard’s torso. She placed a hand over McKay’s next.
“No,” he whispered.
“Rodney, stop.”
“No.”
“Rodney, please.” She tugged on his hands and they too came away without a fight. McKay fell back, his entire body deflating.
They sat around Sheppard for several minutes. A breeze wafted through the trees, cooling the sweat covering Ronon’s skin. A distant bird chirped and whistled. Ronon felt the gravity of this world pulling him down, pressing against him from all sides, and he wondered if he’d be able to stand up and walk the short distance to the jumper. He had never felt so exhausted, or so drained, in his life.
“I don’t even remember what happened,” McKay suddenly said. Ronon blinked at the memories that assaulted him-hiking, the hunters, the fight. Sheppard lying on his side, dead. He dragged a hand over his face, realizing he had no idea how Sheppard had died either. He’d just been…dead.
“We need to bring John home,” Teyla whispered.
It took two of them to carry Sheppard’s body to the jumper. He and McKay stumbled through the woods with their burden between them while Teyla picked up the discarded med kit and defibrillator case and the remains of Sheppard’s vest and t-shirt. Ronon’s arms shook the entire time. By the time they walked into the back of the jumper, he was sweating almost as much as he had been when he’d been doing CPR at full strength. They set Sheppard on the bench and Ronon straightened him out, relieved that his arms had held up and that he hadn’t dropped his friend.
McKay hovered behind him, his own uncertainty about what to do bleeding into the air. When Teyla finally stumbled into the jumper, she looked like she was on the verge of passing out, and McKay darted toward her to grab the bags out of her hands. Ronon stayed on his knees next to the bench. He’d crossed Sheppard’s hands over his stomach, and he held them in place now, not sure he could stand up even if he wanted to.
Without a word, McKay and Teyla made their way to the front of the jumper, and a second later the back hatch slid closed with a hiss. The jumper was plunged into shadow, dispelled only when McKay powered up the craft and the overhead light came on. Sheppard looked worse-if that was in any way possible-in the artificial light of the jumper. Should he cover him?
Ronon thought suddenly of what would happen when they arrived back in Atlantis-of the gaping stares as people boarded the jumper and wheeled the body of the military commander of Atlantis through the hallways. Sheppard wouldn’t want that; he’d hate the attention. His vest had been flung on the floor and Ronon reached over for it. He dug into one of the pockets and pulled out the small silvery packet that contained an emergency blanket. It would have to do.
The jumper was flying through the atmosphere as Ronon flung the blanket open. The crinkling of material seemed extra loud in the quiet space. He glanced up at McKay and Teyla’s back and was grateful to see their attention focused on the windshield in front of them. Clouds and blue skies turned to the starry vista of space. He was alone with Sheppard for the moment, maybe for the last time.
As Ronon pulled the blanket up over Sheppard’s face, the jumper shuddered, almost knocking him over. He scrambled to catch his balance and looked up again at the cockpit. Lights were flashing all over the dashboard, and McKay’s hands flew across the console in all directions. The ship shuddered again, like someone had reached out of space and grabbed their tiny craft in a fist. Alarms blared, piercing the silence.
“Rodney?” Teyla cried out.
“I don’t know!”
His hands moved faster, and a diagnostic screen popped up in front of them. Ronon could make no sense of the data scrolling by. Another rumbling jolt sent him flying backward, rolling on the ground and smacking his head into the other bench. More alarms shrieked, and he could smell something burning.
He glanced over at Sheppard and saw that one of his arms had slid off the bench and was now dangling off the side. With a pained grunt, Ronon pushed himself up and crawled over to him. The jumper was shaking continuously now, and the smell of smoke grew stronger.
“McKay!” he yelled out as he grabbed Sheppard’s arm and set it back on the bench. He kept one hand on his friend’s body as he turned toward his other two teammates.
“Initial dampeners are out. And engines!”
“Can we reach the gate?” Teyla was gripping the front console to keep herself upright. Beyond the windscreen, the stars shone calm and bright.
“I don’t-” Another wailing alarm cut through the cacophony of sound and McKay stiffened. “The proximity alarm! There’s something out there!”
“What is it?” Teyla asked, trying to lean forward to look out the windshield without falling out of her chair in the process.
“I don’t know. I can’t…Oh, God-it’s huge.”
“What’s going on?” Ronon roared as the jumper pitched to the side. He was flung forward onto Sheppard and had a brief second to realize he was crushing his friend, and then the jumper was hurled in the opposite direction. Ronon fell backward, bringing Sheppard with him. He landed on the floor of the jumper, bouncing as the ship continued to twist and tremble. Sheppard landed on top of him and Ronon latched onto him, wrapping his arms around his chest and pinning him in place. If they were going to be tossed around the jumper, they would do it together.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the alarms and screams of panic emanating from somewhere above him. When the jumper was suddenly jerked downward, it took Ronon a moment to realize he was in mid-air. He had one last thought that this couldn’t end well for any of them before the floor rushed back up and slammed into the back of his head.
TBC...
Part Two