Fic: Out in the Open, 2/2 (Sheppard/McKay, PG-13)
Title : Out in the Open
Author: xparrot
Recipient: mz_bstone - I hope the McShep and team bonds satisfy!
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard (+ references to Teyla/Kanaan and team gen)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (~22,000 words) (set after 5x14: "The Prodigal") It's Situation Normal for the team when they're caught an avalanche, but digging themselves out uncovers more than they counted on.
Note: Big thanks to my beta (she knows who she is), for the title and the rest.
Part 1
*
"-Give me a few minutes," Rodney told John and Ronon over the radio, as Teyla listened. "Anyway, it'll be better to try anything at the end of the thirty-eight minute window, when the gate's sure to close. Just promise me you two idiots won't play lumberjack with C-4."
"Scout's honor," John replied. "I'll trust Canadian know-how when it comes to lumberjacking."
"I don't even own a flannel shirt, you know," Rodney said, huffily and nonsensically, but he sounded better than he had when he'd first answered the radio. He had told her he would not fall asleep, but exposure and the fatigue of pain would not be making that easy, Teyla knew. And John had realized it, she thought; his tone had changed when Rodney had responded, becoming lighter, needling him to spur retorts, getting his blood and brain moving again.
It was how he usually handled their teammate, when Rodney was under strain: providing another target for his anxiety, stressing him out to paradoxically relax him in the doing. John sounded as he always did, sharp, but with that certain unshakable affection that after this long even Rodney had learned to hear, for all his usual deafness to such things.
Teyla listened, but could hear no difference in what John said to Rodney, in what Rodney answered. It didn't surprise her-a couple months, Rodney had said, and that had not surprised her, either, though she couldn't say why. She had learned something new today, was still learning; yet she did not feel ignorant or foolish, the way she sometimes did when Rodney showed her new technology. Then she might make guesses that were wrong, and be embarrassed when he corrected her (looking surprised, as if he couldn't imagine how anyone could possibly make such a stupid mistake.)
In this, however, she would not make many mistaken guesses; she would often not be wrong. It didn't surprise her that she hadn't realized before this, that she had not considered the question; but it didn't surprise her either, that even knowing, she could hear no differences in their voices now.
"Whoops," John said. "Wraith are on patrol, we have to relocate. Radio silence until we're back on."
"Be careful, John, Ronon," Teyla said quickly.
"Right," Ronon said, with a bit too much irony for her tastes, and they signed off with a hiss of static.
"Teyla?" Rodney sounded nervous.
"I am here."
"Yeah, you are," Rodney said. "I'm tracking you on the LSD, you should be right there. What do you see?"
Teyla stopped walking to look around. She had reached a ridge; the ground was more level here, and the trees had thinned out, those remaining bent and beaten by the wind. But there was no door like the imposing metal ones built into the mountainside; there was nothing.
"Look harder," Rodney said, when she told him so. "There's got to be something."
"These energy readings," Teyla asked, "can you make out their shape?"
"What shape, that's ridiculous, it'd be like trying to paint a beach by listening to the surf-hmm. Actually...give me a second..."
She gave him a hundred, counting them off, before she touched her radio again. "Rodney, what do you have?"
"Almost, hold your-okay, got it. I've adjusted the LSD to differentiate between electromagnetic field resonance through various-well, long story; the short one is I'm a genius. It's not as accurate as true radar but it'll do, I'm building a crude image of where you are..."
"Yes?" she prompted.
"And you're right on top of it. Literally-it goes into the ground directly beneath you. It's big, you should be seeing something. Are you sure-"
"I am," Teyla said. "There is nothing here."
"There is, you just can't see it."
"Then it does not help us." Teyla turned a slow circle, scanning the ground, the muddy snow, the stunted trees. Then she frowned. It might only be her imagination, but... "Can you describe to me the precise dimensions of what you see?"
"Sure. From where you're standing, it's a meter and a half directly east, extending in a straight line for three meters-" He read off the directions, and she paced them in the snow, then stepped back.
While she was walking the outline, it seemed only a strange zigzag path; looking at it complete, she recognized its shape. "Rodney, I do not believe I can enter through this door. I am the wrong form."
"You?" Rodney sounded puzzled. "But you're closer to Michael's form than just about anything else, what with your Wraith DNA-um, sorry, Teyla, that maybe was a little inappropriate-"
"It was, but that isn't what I meant," Teyla said. "Rodney, you said that once the avalanche was triggered, Michael would not have been able to enter his lab, unless he had this backdoor. But it's a long climb up the mountain from the Stargate. Perhaps, then, Michael found it easier not to enter by that way at all, and instead always used his backdoor."
"Okay," Rodney said, "that makes sense. But he'd still have to hike up-"
"No," Teyla corrected, tracing the outline of the backdoor with her eyes, the space between the trees where it would open. Just large enough and no larger; small enough to be almost unnoticeable, even from the air. "Not if he flew. This door is the bay for a Wraith dart."
"Oh," Rodney said, in the disgruntled tone of having failed to figure something out first, and then, "Oh!" in the opposite tone.
She knew what he was going to say before he spoke. John, for all he wasn't a scientist, might often think along parallel (and frequently incomprehensible) tracks to Rodney; it was rarer for Teyla, but an oddly triumphant feeling when she did, to know her mind might fly as fast and far as his. So she smiled when he said, "I have-"
"-An idea," Teyla completed for him, satisfied.
***
"So," John whispered into his radio, "Michael usually flew in through the gate." They'd known he used darts, and it did explain why he'd bothered clearing the forest around the Stargate.
"Always flew, most likely," Rodney said. "The trail up the mountain was a trap. Or maybe the path was there all along, but the door was a trap, anyway; any attempt to enter would set off the avalanche. The sneaky bastard."
"He always was," said John.
"But it works in our favor now," Teyla said.
"Yeah." He'd heard the plan. It wasn't their worst, but that wasn't saying much. "You guys are sure-"
"We are," Teyla said, with that particular patience so flawless that to John it always sounded one step away from homicidal mania. Not that he would ever admit it to Teyla. "As long as you are certain you can deal with the Wraith around the Stargate."
"Four Wraith," Ronon said. He had his blaster in hand; he hadn't holstered it since they had reached the gate's clearing. "No problem."
"Then it is decided," Teyla said.
"Right," John said. "We'll get into position; report in when the Wraith show up there."
"Understood."
John waited a moment, then asked, "McKay?"
"Yes," Rodney replied, "That is, understood-obviously, since it's my plan. Mine and Teyla's, I mean. And not that I have anything to do except try not to get captured by Wraith. But, yes, understood, acknowledged, et cetera."
It was enough words to be reassuring, though John didn't like the brief pause before he had answered, or the rasp in his voice when he had. Winded, like Rodney sounded after hightailing it up twenty flights of stairs, but he hadn't been doing any climbing on that leg. "Rodney, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine," Rodney said shortly, but before John started worrying he elaborated, "Provided one's definition of 'fine' includes sitting under an emergency blanket in sub-zero temperatures with a fractured fibula."
"It's barely below thirty," John informed him.
"Celsius," Rodney retorted.
"Could be worse; could be Kelvin. Hang in there, buddy, this'll be over before you know it."
"Could you maybe sound a little more final?" Rodney snarked. "Don't want to jinx us, after all," and he clicked off.
John switched to a private channel. "Teyla?"
"Yes?"
"How's-" He stopped himself before he asked. Even if Teyla didn't take offense, Ronon, sitting in the underbrush only a few feet away, would hear. And John would never intentionally imply that he didn't trust Teyla, implicitly or explicitly, with his life, with any of their lives. Like he trusted all of them, entirely and completely; it would be betraying them and himself too, if ever they thought he doubted them. "How's it coming, where are you at?"
"I have almost finished planting the charges, according to Rodney's advice," Teyla reported.
"Good."
"John," Teyla said, her voice softening, "Rodney is doing well. He is in pain, but he is not in danger, I don't believe."
"Yeah," John told her. "I know."
"I am watching out for him."
"I know," John said again. "Make sure you watch out for yourself, too."
"Providing you and Ronon attempt to do the same," Teyla said, and switched off before John could call her on the "attempt."
***
The sun was still shining, and the sky showed blue in the gaps between the branches above, but the forest's shade seemed cooler than when they had arrived. Or maybe it was how the wind had picked up. Teyla zipped her parka up to her neck to block the draft. She had never cared for the cold; even as a child, the summer would have to be sweltering before she would willingly swim in the river's fast, freezing currents. Which never had stopped Kanaan or the other kids from pushing her in, but she would always climb out immediately and exact her vengeance on them.
She had been to worlds far colder, had hiked through deeper snow, and her feet and her nose had been more painfully frozen than this before. All the same, she would rather this moment be back on Atlantis, or with her people, or any of a hundred other places. And the voice in her ear wasn't helping. "-then there were the two idiot researchers who went out for a jog and got lost on the ice. By the time they were rescued, one of them lost four toes to frostbite, but hey, that's how it goes in Antarctica, there's a reason no one ever tried to colonize-"
"Rodney," Teyla said, "I do not see what relevance this story has."
"What are you talking about, it's very relevant to our particular...ah. Um. You mean, what's the point. Yeah, I guess you know wilderness survival better than I do, this is...never mind. Sorry. There are Wraith out there, you should probably be maintaining radio silence, too, along with Ronon and Sheppard. So. Consider your silence maintained, starting now."
He sounded slightly offended, but with Rodney, that could as easily be from guilt as insult. Teyla reminded herself that this was her teammate and friend; that Rodney was colder and more miserable than herself, not even able to move to keep himself warm. For all his words came as fast as ever, he would stutter now and again as his teeth chattered, and his tangential rambling sounded more and more like he did after a sleepless night in the lab, when coffee and adrenaline no longer sufficed and only the noise of his own voice was keeping him awake.
Besides, for all that his talk of Antarctica was cold, colder still was the mountainside when all she could hear was the press of her boots on the snow and the wind through the trees. "Rodney," she said across their private channel, "I do not wish that we quit talking, only that we find a topic less chilling."
"Oh," Rodney said. "That makes sense, yeah. ...Um, what do you want to talk about?"
Of all the questions Rodney so eagerly and impatiently asked, this was not one often heard from him, and Teyla swallowed an impolitic chuckle. "Truthfully, I had not considered. What would interest you? That is warming?"
"Hey, you're the one tramping around the woods," Rodney returned. "Whatever you want. Athosian stuff. Or, I don't know, baby stories. What Torren's doing."
"Nothing except sleep, since you saw him yesterday evening," Teyla said. "At least not that I know of, since I came to prepare for this mission before he awoke."
"Sorry," Rodney said hastily. "I didn't mean-you'll be back to see him soon. We'll stop the Wraith and be off this godforsaken mountain and back on Atlantis, where it's warm-"
"Yes," Teyla said.
"Provided there isn't another unscheduled avalanche, or the Wraith don't bring in more reinforcements, or we're not hit by a blizzard, because the sky looks clear now but without accurate atmospheric readings-um. Sorry. I'm not very good at this. Being warming."
"Perhaps not," Teyla said, though her lips curved in a smile that she felt down into her belly, as good as a sip of mulled Ruus wine.
The pause that followed was not coldly silent; Teyla could almost hear Rodney thinking, like the nearly inaudible whir of a computer's fans. Did his brain warm him, she wondered, as computer circuits heated as they processed? Certainly he thought as quick and clear as any computer-louder, too, Ronon would say...
"Teyla," Rodney said, abrupt, and just as abruptly fell quiet again.
"Yes?"
"Are-um. It's a personal question. Sort of. And I don't want to tick you off. So if you don't want to-"
"I will not be offended. Ask, please."
"I hadn't thought about it before," Rodney said, and the forced casualness of his tone should have warned her, "but were there gay people on Athos? Are there any gay Athosians?"
It was not what she had expected; not what she had been thinking about, deliberately. And she had thought Rodney would be too distracted by the cold and his injury and their circumstances; thought that her own opinion would be such a minor bother to him, amidst all the rest. She had underestimated him.
"Teyla?" Rodney asked, and she was not imagining his apprehension, even with his voice tinny and flattened in the tiny radio speaker.
"I have reached the trail," Teyla replied, because she had; or rather, where the trail had been, before the avalanche.
"The Wraith-"
"Are not yet in sight." As planned, they were still a little ways down the mountain, though she could feel their approach, like a bad taste in her mouth she could not swallow away.
The darts, too, were no longer overhead, down at the Stargate with Ronon and John. Teyla stepped out into the open, tramping an obviously visible path across the piled snow and dirt. Even if the Wraith were not practiced trackers-and few were, save those who hunted Runners; most of them preferred easier prey-they could not fail to miss these footprints.
She made it back to the forest's edge before Rodney dared speak again. "Teyla, I'm-I told you, I didn't want to-sorry, can we forget-"
"You didn't offend me," Teyla told him honestly. "I was considering what you asked; I do not need to forget it."
"Oh." He let her consider for a few more seconds as she pushed into the woods, being sure to break a few branches here and there, and stepping in fresh patches of snow that would clearly mark her footprints. "Um, you know what 'gay' means, right? Not everybody talks about-"
"I know, yes," she said. "And no, there were no gay people on Athos. Or, that is, not as you mean gay. There are no Athosians who would only ever have sex with the same as they are."
"Oh," Rodney said quietly, as she had not often heard him sound, bemused and repentant, as if he could not fix what he had sworn he would. She didn't like hearing him sound so; it was so rare to see him completely fail.
"There are those who like to," Teyla told him. "Some more than others, but many of us have found pleasure in the familiarity of another body like our own, in the joy of understanding that which is always a mystery to men-or to women."
"Many of you?" Rodney asked, almost timidly. "You?...um, too personal, I retract-"
"More than once," Teyla said, smiling a little to think of that hot comfort in this cold place. "With two of my women friends, when I was younger."
"Two-at the same time?"
"On one occasion," Teyla said serenely, shaking her head to imagine the wideness of Rodney's eyes; he would be licking his lips now, she thought.
"That's really hot-um, interesting..."
"Kanaan shared the same, with his friends," Teyla said, breaking a trail through frost-stiffened underbrush, the iced branches crackling as she forced through them. "But now we have Torren. And I should bear two more children, by him or another, and Kanaan must father two more, as Athosians, and those with the Gift beside. Until we have, our bodies should not be dedicated to those pursuits with no chance of fruit."
"Hold on, you're going to have two more kids?" Rodney demanded.
"As a woman of Athos, it is my duty to my people." Teyla hesitated. Even with Kanaan, for all they shared and talked about, it was easier not to ask aloud, to hope that these questions might otherwise be resolved, by circumstance rather than conscious decision. "As a woman of Atlantis...I do not know. Your people's numbers are great already, after so long without the Wraith, and you have other needs...we have other needs. Still, the Gift is valuable, as are other gifts. Your mind, as you have told us before. And John's ATA gene-if Atlantis loses such blood, it would be a great loss."
"I know," Rodney said, so immediately that she knew he had his own questions, unasked and unanswered but not unconsidered. "Believe me, I've thought about it-I wanted it. I proposed to Katie. And then, Jennifer-but it didn't work out. It doesn't work out, and I thought it was impossible, it was me, it was...but the SGC has my sperm; hell, they've got my whole genome, pre- and post-ATA modification. If they decide they need a couple mini-McKays for insurance, and Jeannie's spawn aren't interested, they can always whip up a batch. Maybe mix in Sam's genes for good measure, we'd make one hell of a cute...but that's not the point."
"No," Teyla agreed. Her feet and their conversation had carried her to the steeper side of the mountain-Rodney was along this slope, but far enough away that she could not hear his voice except through the radio. Far enough that the Wraith would not notice him, following her trail. "It should not be."
"The point is..." Rodney faltered, took a breath and spoke as if he had to, as if there were a knife to his neck forcing the confession, "I thought it was impossible, but John, John and I...we work. It works. For now, anyway, and maybe...well, for now. So even though I'm not going to be having any kids with him, not unless we make some significant advances in genetics-which isn't out of the question, given Ancient and Asgard technology-but it's not to the point that we've seriously discussed it-"
"Rodney," Teyla said gently, "you owe me no justification. You are not Athosian, and what you have with John is not my concern."
"No?" Rodney asked. "Because no, we're not Athosian, but John and I, we are your teammates, and this-this-what we have, like you said. It's not a team thing, not a usual team thing, anyway."
"And that is important," she said as she began to ascend the incline.
"Hell yes, it's important! Teyla, if you, if Ronon-if you guys aren't okay with this, if the team can't-do you think John would-damn it, you know what this team means to him. And me, too, of course. But John...if it came down to that..." Rodney trailed off, but didn't close the line; she could hear him over it, waited until he said, quietly, "I wanted to tell you before this. You, Ronon, just with you guys, I wanted to talk it over. But John..."
"John does not share his heart easily."
"It's not that he doesn't trust you," Rodney said, sounding desperate. "It's not like that at all, he does, he's just-worse at this stuff than I am, and that's saying something, but he'd never want to-"
"I know. I know John," Teyla told him.
"Yeah. Yeah, you do, you've known him as long as I have, haven't you. Technically I met him first, but we didn't really...not until we came to Atlantis, and we met you the first day, so-"
"Yes, though you know him better, I think," Teyla said, her sentences shortened with her breath as she climbed. "You are both Earth men. Your language, your customs, are the same."
"Canadian really isn't just another way of saying American," Rodney said disparagingly, then conceded, "and besides, knowing about Earth or America or English wouldn't really help you to get John. That's not who he is, not really."
"No," Teyla said. "He is Atlantian. As we are."
"Yeah." Rodney's satisfaction was unmistakable. "That."
He hesitated, and she realized he was gathering his courage, was ready for it when he said, "Teyla-you're part of the team, and if you're not okay with this-with what we're... Look, I know it's not what you signed on for-"
"I was never on a team before this," Teyla said. "I had no expectations for it when I 'signed on.' As for what other expectations I carried, as an Athosian-we are Atlantian now. And I am here."
"Here?"
"In position," she explained, looking across the ridge, to where Michael's dart bay was marked in the snow. "Now we only have to wait."
"And hope the Wraith find the track you left and follow it."
"They have. They are." Teyla did not have to strain to sense them; their presence was a bitter aftertaste on her tongue, a stickiness on her hands that she could not wipe away. The cold air numbed her nose, but on it she imagined she smelled cobwebs and rot. "They are coming."
***
John had a reputation for being a pretty patient guy, but honestly, waiting wasn't among his preferred pastimes. On the scale of flying an F-15 Eagle in clear skies to getting his life sucked out by a Wraith, waiting was about a five on a good day, in a comfy chair, with a handheld game. Waiting crouched in icy bushes, with the cold leaching into his joints and every bruise on top of his other bruises making itself felt when he changed positions, scored markedly lower, even if there hadn't been Wraith to watch.
Ronon was no help; he hadn't moved a muscle in ten minutes, kneeling behind a fallen tree like he had been carved from a twin stump. It was patently unfair, because John knew Ronon hated the waiting game more than him; he had to be sedated if he was going to be stuck in the infirmary more than twenty-four hours. But Ronon knew how to wait when he had to, even if he didn't like it; and when Wraith were around Ronon did what he had to.
So he was startled when Ronon started to speak, his low voice carrying across to John and no further. Two conversations initiated in the same day, that had to be breaking a record. "You and McKay."
No record-the same conversation, resumed. Right. "Yeah."
"You're fucking?"
John shifted, regretted it when his P-90 bumped the sorest spot on his chest. "Sometimes, yeah."
"I asked you when I first came, what was between you and him. You said nothing."
"There wasn't anything," John said. "Not then."
Ronon didn't speak, but his eyebrows raised.
"There wasn't," John insisted, irritated. "I never imagined this would happen, not then. Not between me and Rodney, of all people."
"McKay's not your type?" The English slang sounded natural on Ronon's tongue, as it never did on Teyla's-differences between the Satedan and Athosian languages, or between the individuals speaking them? Or else a glitch in the Stargate translation techno-magic?
Either way, John understood. He shook his head. "More I wasn't Rodney's type. I didn't...my gaydar's always been shit. And I wasn't looking anyway, I wasn't looking for this."
"Didn't think you were."
If Ronon were Teyla, John thought, she probably would be asking him questions now. Not accusing, Teyla was never that direct; but she'd want to know, would be trying to understand. Or else she would understand without asking, as Teyla so often did, but then she would want him to understand, to be sure.
-He was sure, that was what scared the crap out of him; why this had happened at all, when he knew it shouldn't. John had never been great at following the rules but he'd never really been into breaking them, either; just sometimes they got in the way. But he hadn't been thinking of the rules that night, not out on the pier and not back in his quarters-it was always his quarters, Rodney always came over, but that night John had been the one leading them there. The corridors had been empty but they hadn't touched again, not until the doors had closed; being cautious, or maybe just shy.
John had made his share of mistakes in his life; more than his share, when you put waking the Wraith on the scale. Usually he knew when he made them, at the time or else after, even though most of them he'd make again; he hadn't had a choice.
He'd had a choice, with Rodney. But the thing was, it hadn't felt like a mistake. Not then and not later. Not until this moment, squatting in these wintry woods next to Ronon.
He hadn't wanted to say anything. Had wanted to keep that separate from this, personal life and professional duty stowed in different boxes-though seriously, how the hell had he thought that would work, when Rodney and Teyla and Ronon were in both?
Ronon wasn't even looking at him. Teyla might have been, but Ronon was watching the Wraith at the Stargate, not sparing a glance away-maybe he didn't trust John anymore, but he trusted the Wraith a hell of a lot less.
"Look," John said, "if you're not okay with this-"
Ronon didn't turn his head, but his eyes might have flicked to John for an instant. "I could get you in trouble."
"Yeah, you could." He kept his tone low and steady, knew Ronon would hear the challenge in it anyway. "Twice over, for Rodney being a guy, and for him being under my command. You could get me booted out of the Air Force and off Atlantis for good."
Ronon angled his head a degree toward John. "Nah," he said. "You wouldn't stay gone. We need you."
"You know our rules." He had explained them to Ronon, way back when, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' included. Ronon hadn't reacted, no more than usual, just shrugged and said that the Satedan military had had its own codes, that he was used to it. "I signed on, I agreed to follow them."
"McKay didn't."
"Doesn't change the fact that he's a man, and a member of my team." John kept his eyes on the Wraith, like Ronon was, even though the four drones standing guard hadn't moved more than a couple feet since the two of them had gotten in position. They had a mission to do; that was more important. While they were off-world, anyway. He didn't want to think about what might happen when they got back.
"Satedan squads were different," Ronon remarked. "Different rules."
"Yeah, but did those rules include screwing your same-sex teammates?"
"Yeah," Ronon said.
John's head snapped around. "Uh..."
Ronon's shrug was so nonchalant that John couldn't tell if he was being played; cool enough that he might not be. "Satedan military tradition, everyone was supposed to know everyone in their squad. At least a bit."
"'Know' in the Biblical sense?"
"Know in the fooling around sense," Ronon said. "Didn't have to be fucking. Mouth, hands, whatever."
"So your old teammates-Rakai, Ara, Tyre..."
"Yeah."
"Um." John turned back toward the Wraith, flexed his stiff arms while he considered this. In retrospect, he was just as glad Ronon wasn't looking him in the eye. "So, that time you told me you had someone back on Sateda..."
"No," Ronon said. "She...that was different. Not the army. But Tyre, everyone-that was being a soldier."
"A soldier."
"That's how it worked. Know them, know who you're protecting, who protects you. Their bodies were mine; my body was theirs."
"Jesus," John said. He was imagining in spite of himself. Tyre, Ara, and Rakai he'd met, and there'd been two others, too, dead at Wraith hands..."Your whole squad, that was six of you, right? And you all..."
"That's what made a team strong," Ronon said. "A Satedan squad. Kept us close."
"Close, okay." That was one way to put it. Jesus. And he'd thought shared bunks were bad.
"But you're not Satedan," Ronon said. "And McKay's not a solider anyway. You and McKay, it's different."
John could have lied, but Ronon would know. "Yeah, it's different."
Ronon was quiet for a while. "It was weird," he said at last. "When I first joined you guys. I knew other armies weren't like Sateda's, but Atlantis, you were strong. Strong like us, and loyal, too. I didn't get your rules at first."
"But you get them now," John said. The feeling in the pit of his stomach was the same hard knot he got before a mission to a new planet, or before pulling off a flight maneuver he'd only ever tried in simulations. Knowing everything could go to hell in an instant and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it, because he'd already walked through the gate, he'd already put himself in the cockpit.
He'd had that same knot sitting with Rodney on the pier, that single moment after. Rodney had been on his third beer, saying for the thousandth time in two months that it was probably for the best, that he wasn't cut out for that kind of happiness anyway. John had wanted him to shut up, and he could have just said so, he could have put down his own can and walked away, he could have done anything; but he'd leaned over-and god, the look on Rodney's face, two half moons reflecting in his eyes...
John couldn't see what was in Ronon's eyes now; in profile they were inscrutable, fixed on the Wraith eighty feet away. He didn't want to ask-never wanted this question to come up at all, and who cared if denial was the coward's way; he'd never claimed to be brave.
He jerked when his radio crackled, nearly brained himself on a low-hanging branch and fumbled for the button. "Teyla?"
Teyla's voice was harsh, forced low, to only a whispered hiss. "The Wraith are here. They have found the dart bay. Are you ready?"
John glanced at Ronon, his impassive features cracking into a deadly grin. The knot in his own gut was drowned in the flood of adrenaline, warming his stiff limbs. "Yeah, we're ready."
***
The Wraith were too far away for Teyla to be able to hear what they were saying, but she watched the two males confer as their drone soldiers stood watch around the outline of the dart bay. She had made plain tracks to it, and then carefully brushed her others away; the obvious conclusion was that she had somehow entered the bay, and the snow she had cleared away made apparent what sort of bay it was.
"What are they doing? Are they going for it?" Rodney demanded, an anxious whisper in her ear.
"I cannot tell yet." It was hard to get a read on the Wraith's surface thoughts, like trying to identify fish in a pool of murk; and she dared not probe deeper, for fear they might notice her presence. But she attempted to influence them as well she could-Think dart-y thoughts, Rodney had advised, and she tried.
She saw when one of them raised his head, and the sense of summoning was clear. "Yes," she said into the radio, "they are going for it."
"Yeah," John confirmed a second later, "the darts are-damn it!"
"What? What?" Rodney had no need to whisper, being safely distant from the Wraith; his voice was tight and high with apprehension.
"Only one dart left, the other's still here!"
"I see it," Teyla said. The single dart screamed into the sky above the ridge, circled once and then dropped toward the bay, plummeting through the air like a stone.
The Wraith moved out of the way, making room around the bay entrance. When the dart was a little more than a man's height above the ground, it jerked to a halt, just as the earth beneath its shadow suddenly fell away, rocky gray ground parting as neat as Atlantis's transporter doors would slide open. Triggered by the dart's proximity, just as Rodney had predicted.
"The bay is open," Teyla reported, "and the dart is about to enter." She looked up at the sky, but the second dart had not come; still keeping watch at the Stargate. "What should I do?"
"If we don't get it when it enters," Rodney warned, "we don't know what kind of safeguards Michael set up inside..."
"Do it." John was unhesitating; trusting in the plan, in her and Rodney's plan, as he always did. Even when it was not going to plan-John believed they would find a way to make it work. Believed in them, always.
She thought of John on the slope after the avalanche, not digging with them, wandering elsewhere-dazed, she had thought then; but searching, too. Had he guessed Rodney had discarded the life-signs detector? Or else he had not known what he was looking for, but believed in Rodney, believed that there was something to find.
"The dart is entering," Teyla said. "Fire in the hole." She said it less because there was anyone to warn, than because she never had other chances to say it; she rarely held the trigger herself, but now she closed her hand around it.
In the frozen pause after the detonator clicked, Teyla held her breath-one heartbeat, two, and then she saw the flash, heard the boom of the explosion, rocking the dart, knocking the Wraith down. They had unfortunately been too far away to be killed, but the dart, at least, was foundering; the C-4 blasts had pinpointed its engines, crippling if not destroying it.
"It's down," she said, just as over the radio John said, "Yeah, and there goes the other one-Ronon-"
Then, over them, across the mountainside, Teyla heard a grumbling rumble building to a roar, already too familiar from earlier today.
The Wraith, not so experienced, were staring around themselves wildly, jumping to their feet with stunners at ready, but their weapons were useless against the enemy bearing down on them. The snow from the overhang above, destabilized by the earlier avalanche, came sliding down like a whitewater torrent made solid, crashing over the damaged Wraith dart, driving it down into the bay, before it engulfed the Wraith.
This, too, Rodney had predicted, and Teyla had positioned herself on the stone ridge accordingly, out of its path. What he had not predicted was the second Wraith dart, swooping down from the sky just as the avalanche hit. Its white beam flickered over the Wraith on the mountainside, swallowing half of them safely in.
At least she knew the dart was not over the gate, the chance John and Ronon needed-but that was less reassuring than it might be. No sooner had the avalanche slowed, before Teyla dared move from the safety of the ridge, then the dart dove-not back to the Stargate, but rather toward the ridge. Mere yards from where she was hidden, the white beam flashed, leaving five Wraith standing in the snow before her.
Above them, the dart whirled in the air and shot back toward the gate. "John," she warned in a whisper, "it returns," and she switched off her radio.
The dart might trouble John and Ronon, but she had problems of her own. She could feel the Wraith minds, their anger roiling like a storm. They were enraged, and hungry, hunting for whoever had attacked them, knowing she must be close, and Teyla shrank back against the scant concealment of the ridge's granite, praying to the Ancestors that the thunderous pounding of her heart would not give her away.
***
John had already worked out with Ronon who got which Wraith, so the moment the second dart twisted around in the usual uncanny violation of aerodynamics and rocketed off toward the mountain, neither of them wasted a second. They sprang from the underbrush, John aiming at the drone to the left, holding down the trigger until the masked Wraith staggered and collapsed under the P-90's onslaught.
As soon as it was down, he dashed forward, ignoring the other three, confident that Ronon would take them out by the time he reached the DHD. He kept his head ducked low as he ran. A single blue stunner beam rippled past him, but it only zapped a spruce sapling. Then all the Wraith were on the ground, and John was at the DHD, punching in Atlantis's sequence so fast he jammed his fingers.
The whoosh of the wormhole exploding into being was the best damn thing he'd heard all day. He looked into the shimmering blue, hit his radio. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, come in."
"Colonel Sheppard," Woolsey answered; he must have been in the control room, waiting for contact. "What is your-"
"No time," John cut him off. "Wraith have been holding the 'gate, we got to get it open on your end-can you dial us back, pronto?"
"Understood, Colonel," Woolsey said. "The dialing sequence is already set, we'll connect again as soon as it's closed."
"Great." John stepped back from the DHD. The event horizon blinked out as he exhaled, then fountained out again before he could take a second breath.
If the Wraith on the other end were wise to them-he held his breath until his radio crackled. "Colonel Sheppard?"
"Still here," John said. "Make sure you keep the wormhole active until you send the reinforcements. We need a jumper, with drones-we've got one or two Wraith darts, and-" he looked around; Ronon had dispatched the Wraith on the ground with his usual lethal thoroughness, "-maybe ten Wraith."
"Major Lorne's team is heading for the jumper bay," Woolsey replied. They would have been standing by, per the official protocol, since Atlantis had failed to connect. That was the advantage of Mr. Woolsey's red-tape fetish; his adherence to the rules was as reliable as the tides. John had never properly appreciated pencil-pushing before Woolsey, but when navigating the unpredictable maelstrom that was life in Pegasus, bureaucratic pedantry was an airbus-difficult to maneuver and no fun to fly, but it stayed in the air. At times like this, he could almost forgive the endless emails about his tardy mission reports. "Colonel, what is your team's situation-"
"John," Teyla said, "it returns."
John automatically looked to the sky. Ronon didn't bother, charging for the safety of the forest, and John sprinted after him. They made it just as the dart screamed back over the clearing. The shriek of its overcharged engines sounded furious, a temper tantrum, and Ronon was grinning darkly.
"Colonel?" Woolsey was asking urgently.
"Just a little dart trouble," John reported, watching the dart's tight circles over the Stargate. Under the thick tree cover, the dart's scooping beam couldn't reach them. "We're safe. Tell Major Lorne to be ready for a single dart in a lousy mood-forget the cloak, shields up, the moment he's through the gate."
"They're on their way now."
Rodney's voice broke in. "Sheppard? Ronon?"
"Rodney, yeah, we got through-"
"Teyla's not answering me."
John's back stiffened. The sweat raised by their attack on the Wraith was drying on his face, freezing when the wind blew over it. "Teyla? Teyla, come in." Static answered, and John stared at Ronon, touched his radio again. "Rodney, you said the C-4 might trigger another avalanche-"
"It did, but she was out of its way," Rodney said. "And the Wraith weren't, she should have been fine, but now I'm showing multiple signals on the LSD-"
"Sheppard," Ronon said, as the jumper exploded out of the wormhole-and that sight should have been another highlight of John's day, but he was too cold now to care.
***
The Wraith were so close Teyla could smell them, not their illusory presence, but the clammy stench of their ships, their moldering leather coats and the lizard-cool mustiness of their flesh, overpowering the pungent scent of the drooping fir boughs that camouflaged her. She lay flat on her stomach on the granite ridge, and felt like she could not breathe, with that stink filling her nostrils. This perhaps was what Rodney felt in too-small spaces, what he might have felt trapped under the snow this morning, her heart beating so fast and loud she could scarcely think over it.
But the Wraith were searching, and if they found her, they would stun her, leaving her defenseless; they might take her captive, but they as easily might drain her life. She could feel their hunger. They did not care for the cold any more than she did; it sapped their strength, made them slow and sluggish like serpents at night, though they could still strike faster and more powerfully than any human. They wanted strength-her strength, her life.
As she wanted theirs. Slow and silent, Teyla brought down the muzzle of her P-90. The dart's beam had rescued both of the white-haired males; they were the most dangerous, and without them the drones might be so confused that she could escape. One of the males was scarcely a body-length away from where she was concealed. He was turning away in his search, gaze on the ground; he would not have time to react.
Teyla drew a breath of freezing air, deep enough to make her lungs ache, released it in a plume of white mist. Then she pulled the gun's trigger, shoulders braced against its kick. The automatic rounds slammed into the Wraith's gut, sending him staggering back. She let him fall and swept the gun around, slicing the spray of bullets across the nearest drone soldier's legs, cutting into its knees and dropping the Wraith onto the snow.
Two bolts of blue stabbed toward the rock as the other drones brought their stunners to bear, but Teyla had already leapt from it. She hurtled down the mountainside between the trees, skidding and churning up snow, as the furious Wraith behind her gave chase.
***
Lorne knew what he was doing; when the dart fired, the jumper's shields shimmered in a translucent shell around the craft, holding strong. Two drone weapons shot out of its ports, crossed each other in the air and curved toward the dart, so fast they were only golden blurs.
The dart pilot was smart for a Wraith, though; rather than trying to keep up in the outmatched dogfight, it turned engines and blasted off toward the mountains, weaving erratically as a drunk driver trying to walk the line. The drone missiles gamely followed, but one exploded against a stone outcropping and the other took out a lone pine tree, as the dart disappeared behind one of the higher peaks.
"Lorne, come in," John radioed up, as the Stargate flicked out, Atlantis not wasting more energy maintaining the wormhole when the jumper could dial back. Per protocol, naturally.
"Sorry, sir," Lorne answered. "That's one slippery son of a bitch, should we pursue-"
"Forget about it," John ordered, "get down here." He jogged for the clearing, Ronon beside him.
The jumper was touching down when John's radio hissed back to life. "John?"
John almost slipped in the snow. "Teyla!" Beside him, Ronon's stride faltered for a step, and over the radio Rodney echoed John's relief.
"Three Wraith are pursuing me," Teyla said, her words coming short and staccato, the puffing cadence of speaking while running. "I am downhill from the ridge."
"We're coming for you," John told her. "We've got a jumper, we're on our way," and never mind landing; he'd take out some trees with drones if they had to.
"Sir!" Lorne cut in. "The dart's heading back this ways, and our shield's down-"
"Hold on, Teyla," John said, running for the jumper. "Lorne, get that ship back up in the air-"
Ronon made it first, throwing himself through the jumper's rear hatch. It was closing as the jumper lifted off, Lorne always quick in emergencies, and Ronon reached out for John, caught his arm and yanked him inside, as the dart came screaming back at them.
***
"Hold on, Teyla," John told her, as another blue stun beam flashed beside her, surrounding a spruce in coruscating light, every needle bright and defined for a lightning instant, leaving blinding afterimages. Without the breath to reply, Teyla dodged and kept moving, stumbling down the steep slope. She was more sliding than running; the only grace was that the Wraith were no better in the snow than her, floundering behind her, and she thought she might escape.
The next stun beam rippled over a thicket layered in crystalline ice, beautiful as a lattice of glass. Scintillating blue light sparked along her leg as she brushed by it, numbing it from knee to toes, like she suddenly had a block of wood instead of a foot. Her next step came down wrong on that block, and she tripped, tumbling head over heels like an arecace nut tossed on the surf.
The spinning world stopped moving in degrees, from whirling to rocking to settling once more into solid shapes. Teyla tasted blood in her mouth, and her fingers were cramping with cold; one of her gloves was torn, and the snow against her raw palm burned like metal as she pushed herself up.
"Teyla!" someone yelled, and she reached to cover her ears before she realized the voice was in her ear. The radio fizzed as Rodney shouted her name, desperation hoarsening his voice to almost unrecognizable, "Teyla, are you-"
"I am here, I think," she said, sitting up, and looked about herself, just in time to duck the stun beam passing overhead. The shock of the near miss restored her sense, and she scrambled to her feet, circling back behind a slanting pine log to evade the stunners. Her leg was tingling, but it would support her weight; her stomach dipped and twisted, though, throwing her off-balance, so that she had to cling to the tree. "The Wraith are-"
The Wraith was right before her-the male grimaced at her, close enough to bite. She was not armed-the P-90's hook had torn free, its weight gone from her vest, and she had no sticks-but she threw a punch, and kicked out when the Wraith blocked.
He could have had his drones stun her, but Wraith preferred to drain conscious victims, preferred the taste of fear to the bland peace of oblivion. He wanted her awake, thought her prey he could manage, and in that conceit was her chance. The Wraith snarled as Teyla twisted away-there, the P-90 was laying in the snow, black and deadly, and if she could but reach it she would-
The Wraith's blow caught her hard across the face, sent her flying back. "Teyla!" she heard in her ear, through the tinny radio speaker, just before she smashed into the tree. The rough bark scratched open her cheek and the impact set her head spinning again, white ice and dark boughs whirling around her, and the Wraith looming over her, a wavering nightmare. She groped for a weapon instinctively, but he seemed far away, a distant and disconnected dream, too far away to hurt her...
A noise rent the mountain's quiet, shattering the illusion. Teyla heard it without understanding it, but the Wraith reared back, away from her. As she struggled to find her balance, back to the tree, she saw his yellow eyes widen as he turned his head, toward the echoes ringing through the forest.
The next retort she recognized-the sharp burst of a single gunshot, too far down-slope to hit anything, warning shots fired into the air.
Pistol shots. Rodney.
"There's another one," the Wraith snarled. "Find it, have it! Go!" and he waved the two drones toward the gunshots. As they headed off down the slope, he turned back to her, lips pulled back from vicious teeth in a sickening travesty of a smile. "They'll take their health from what they find. You, though, are mine," he hissed, and raised his hand, the slit in the palm gaping like a hideous, bloodless wound.
Teyla's head was pounding, and when she grimaced she felt the blood dripping down her cheek, cooling on her skin. She doubted she looked much more pleasant than the monster before her. "No, I am not," she told the Wraith, and brought up her own arm as the Wraith's hand came down, stabbing the hunting knife in her fist into the feeding slit.
The Wraith snarled, mouth contorting, and slammed his arm around to backhand her, but Teyla had already thrown herself down into the snow. She skidded half her length, far enough for her outstretched hands to clutch the P-90. Rolling onto her back, she fired up, expending the last of the clip into the Wraith's eyes.
The monster screamed and collapsed, clawing at his face as he thrashed on the ground. Teyla wrenched back his arm, pulled her knife from his hand and sliced the blade across his throat, deep. Dark blood poured out onto the snow, silencing the shrieks from the inhuman throat, as Teyla leaned against the tree, fighting for breath.
Rodney was armed, but injured, and there were two Wraith drones coming for him-drawn by his fire, as he had known they would be. Hoped they would be; hoping the distraction would give her a chance.
Only when she automatically reached for her radio did she realize she no longer heard Rodney's voice. The earpiece had been broken when she hit the tree. She could not tell him she lived, could not tell him how many Wraith were hunting him.
She left the Wraith dying in the snow, and ran for her teammate.
***
By the time John crossed to the jumper's cockpit, Lorne had piloted them up above the treetops. As John entered, the major took the jumper into a steep dive, the forest below tilting wildly in the viewscreen. John grabbed for the back of one of the rear chairs, feeling his stomach plummet at the sight even though his feet stayed firm on the floor, thanks to the inertial dampeners.
"It's the dart, sir," Lorne said through gritted teeth. Lieutenant Lee was hunched over the copilot console, controlling two more weapons drones, their trajectories inscribed across the HUD in glowing lines. "It's making a run for-"
The dart arrowed past the viewscreen, flying as straight and true as if it had been the real deal, thrown by a giant in a mile-wide bar game. It passed the jumper at better than mach 2, just as the Stargate below burst to life.
The bastard must have dialed with the onboard DHD, John realized, and then the dart bull's-eyed the wormhole, vanishing into the blue circle. Fifty points, John thought irreverently, as Lorne swore, "Shit!" Then he glanced at his commanding officer, hastily amended, "Sorry, sir-"
"Forget it," John said, "get us up to the ridge, now-"
"Sheppard!" Ronon snapped from the rear compartment, as Rodney's voice came over the radio, "Teyla-I keep trying, she's not answering, but there's two life-signs over there-shit, oh shit, the other two are heading straight this way, if they find me, I can't even walk, I'm a sitting-"
"Rodney," John said urgently, "keep it down, don't draw attention to your position." He took over the HUD with a thought, muttering an apology to Lorne as he focused on the terrain below, mapping sensor data over the visuals of the mountains. He expanded the range until the life-signs appeared-one lone signal, stationary, with two other strong signals closing in on it fast, and another signal heading in the same direction. The final signal at the edge was faint, weakening-if Teyla had lost to the Wraith-
No, the Wraith would have stunned her and left her healthy, or else would have drained all her life, John told himself; they didn't leave leftovers, not when they were fighting. So Teyla would be that single moving dot, heading for Rodney, though she wouldn't make it in time... "Rodney, maintain radio silence, if they can't hear you they might not find you-"
"Sheppard," Ronon called from the back, "how low can we go in this thing?"
John looked at him, then checked the viewscreen and tapped Lorne's shoulder. "Can you manage twenty-five feet? It'd be more than just skimming the treetops."
Lorne's gene was strong and his piloting skills solid; he could fly circles around, say, Rodney, but he never found the jumpers as easy to handle as John did. He nodded now, though, keeping his eyes locked on the display. "Yes, sir, I can."
"Then cut the speed and bring us down. Here," and he pointed.
Lorne nodded again, stiffly with his neck stick-straight. The jumper decelerated in a split second with the usual lack of discernible momentum, drifting in the air only a few yards off-target.
Ronon hit the switch to lower the jumper's back hatch, and the change in wind resistance made them pitch and yaw. "Easy," John said, leaning over the major to get one hand on the controls. Jumpers didn't like serving two masters, but Lorne trusted him enough to release the stick, and John guided the ship lower, between two trees.
In the back, Ronon had unclipped most of the mesh cargo netting, leaving only the rear end attached. He had his blaster drawn, crouching by the hatch as it opened the rest of the way.
"Oh, son of a bitch," Rodney hissed. "This is-John, are you-"
John heard the gunshots twice over, over the radio and, distantly, through the open hatch, the sound snatched and scattered by the wind-four shots and then nothing. "Rodney?" he shouted over the airstream whistling through the jumper's hatch, and screw radio silence anyway, "Rodney, cavalry's here, come in, damn it-"
"I'm going," Ronon announced. Grabbing the nylon netting tight in one hand with his blaster in the other, he took a flying leap out of the back of the jumper, bellowing a challenge to the Wraith or the wind as he swung out over the forest.
***
She was bruised and bleeding, running as fast as she believed she could manage in the snow and with her lungs aching, but the new pistol shots crashing through the snowy forest sped Teyla's feet. Further down the slope-much further, too far-she saw a flash of blue through the trees, and then there was no more gunfire.
Rodney-the drone soldiers were hungry with the cold; they wouldn't waste any time feeding. Teyla could have cried out in her helplessness, but she had no breath to spare. Her fingers closed around her P-90 as she ran-she would not be too late for vengeance, at least, bitter consolation though that was.
With all her mind and body devoted to the race, she did not hear the noise above her, did not register the downdraft beating against her as anything more than the freezing mountain winds. She did not realize they were no longer alone until she heard the howl, so defiant even the wind couldn't steal it away, a roar no Wraith could make-only one man could, that she knew.
When she came stumbling through the icy bracken some moments later, she was not surprised to find the two Wraith drones flattened on the ground, and Ronon standing over them. At the crunch of her boots he whirled around, his blaster's energy cell glowing red behind his fist.
Teyla froze and raised her hands, knowing his weapon would not be set to stun now. Ronon's eyes widened for an instant; then his expression cooled and hardened like molten metal plunged into a bucket of water. He holstered his blaster, said, "You took out the Wraith."
"Yes," Teyla said, and hurried past him. "Rodney-"
"They didn't get to him," Ronon said, following her toward the wide spruce she had left Rodney under. "Must be stunned, if he's this quiet."
Rodney lay under the prickly boughs, eyes closed and still enough that Teyla's breath caught, until she saw he was still breathing. When she checked his pulse, it was steady and strong, though the skin of his throat was cool to her touch.
He was still holding his sidearm, even stunned; Ronon picked it up out of his lax fingers, put it back in his thigh holster. "One of them was already shot half-dead," he said, and added, as if Rodney could hear him, "Not bad, McKay."
Teyla tilted up her head, seeing through the branches to the boxy tube of the jumper against the sky. "How do we get him to it?"
Ronon cocked his head. "Carry him, I guess."
"Hold it!"
Teyla looked up again. John was clambering down the black mesh netting hanging from the back of the jumper. It ended somewhat more than his height above the ground; he let himself dangle from it, dropped the final few feet into the thick snow bank and climbed out, brushing off the white flakes. "Tell me that looks worse than it is," he ordered, pointing at her face.
Teyla touched her cheek, where the blood had dried stiff and sticky; she had quite forgotten the cut. "It is. I am all right."
"Good. How is he?" he asked, kneeling by Rodney, pulling off his glove to check his pulse, just as Teyla had done, though John's hand lingered for a moment longer, fingers curving gently against the line of Rodney's jaw.
"Stunned," Teyla said, "but no worse than that; the Wraith did not touch him."
John stood again, waved up at the jumper and said, "Throw it down," into his radio. A moment later a bundle of netting and more dropped into the snow. John unfolded the portable travois, said to Ronon, "None of Lorne's team wants to come down, they're all scared of not measuring up, after your Tarzan impression. Kind of a hard act to follow."
Ronon shrugged. "Wasn't trying to measure up," he said, though the gleam in his eye said otherwise.
He and John moved Rodney onto the travois in one quick, efficient lift, careful with his splinted leg; then they were left with the puzzle of hooking it up to the netting. As they untangled the nylon strands, John explained the events down at the Stargate, and the dart's escape. "Which is why we have to hurry," he said, glancing up at the sky, "before they're back with reinforcements."
They had almost completed readying the netting when Rodney awoke, blinking up at them. "Okay," he said hoarsely. "Not dead, then?"
"Not yet," Ronon told him cheerfully.
"None of us. Don't sit up," John warned, putting one hand flat on his chest to keep him down. "Take it easy, you'll be back on Atlantis before you know it."
"Just tell me it'll be warm," Rodney begged.
"I'll warm you up myself," John said flippantly, and then abruptly snatched away his hand. His teasing face had gone still, eyes dark with shame, or something like it.
Rodney's eyes had slid shut again; he didn't notice. "Hold you to that," he mumbled.
John looked at her, at Ronon. Then he shook his head, gaze falling back to Rodney as if he were too tired to lift it away. "Yeah," he said, so quiet Teyla hardly heard it.
"John," Ronon said, and John's head came up again, fast as if he were blocking an attack, but his eyes remained unreadable.
Teyla was dizzy with fatigue, giddy with relief, with the knowledge that she lived, and Rodney and John and Ronon, too. She did not think she could run another step, but John at this moment might have been on the mountain's peak. Too far away for her to chase after him, and her heart ached like her legs, like her lungs.
But Ronon had the strength left that she did not. "I get your rules now," he told John, matter-of-factly. "They're stupid. Sateda's, too."
John stared at him. Ronon's shrug included the mountain, the jumper, the four of them. "It's what we do out here that counts," he said. "Who we protect, who's protecting us. So yeah, McKay's yours. And you're his. And he's mine, and Teyla's his."
Teyla did not need to know why he was saying this to understand his meaning, nor to see the comprehension in John's eyes, the hope. She reached out, took John's gloved hand in hers. "We are yours," she said, "and you are ours. Both of you. Whatever else might change, this does not-you cannot change it."
John ducked his head, turned aside, but he did not pull his hand free right away, and his fingers curled around hers, squeezed before letting go. Then he patted Rodney's shoulder. "Hey, Sleepy, you up for a ride?"
Rodney's heavy eyelids dragged open. "Wazzntslee...Ride?"
"Need to lift you up to the jumper. Just hold still, you'll be fine."
"What? This-"
"No sitting up," John warned again, reaching over him to buckle the travois's straps across his shoulders.
Rodney turned his head, examined the netting and travois set-up, his eyes expanding to white-rimmed panic. "I don't think this is-"
"You'll be fine," John said, then leaned over him. "And I'll be making it up to you later, as promised," he murmured, turning their faces close for a moment, before pulling away.
Ronon grinned, poked Rodney's head. "Come on, McKay, aren't you ready to get off this mountain?"
"Well, if you put it that way..."
John radioed up to the jumper, and the netting stretched, the travois lifting off the ground. It swayed, and John steadied it with one hand.
"Um, not this ready-!" Rodney yelped.
"You will be fine, Rodney," Teyla called up, as he was pulled above their heads. Truthfully, she wished she might be borne up the same way; climbing the netting would be rough on her cold-numbed fingers. But then they would be in the jumper, and then they would be home, with Kanaan and Torren, and her kettle-she would not at this moment like to choose which she more desired to hold, her son, or a steaming cup of tea.
"So." John rocked back on his boot heels. "A secret lab, two avalanches, two darts, a dozen Wraith-and we're still here."
"All four of us," Teyla said, glancing up at the travois swinging between the treetops. Rodney's fretful chatter carried thinly over the wind, anxious but constant; they did not need to hear his words to know he would be well.
Ronon stretched like he was waking from a nap. "So, we still got it?"
John, looking between them, broke into a grin as unexpected and overwhelming as an avalanche.
"Yes," and Teyla heard the laughter in her voice echo off the trees, melt into the snow. "We do."
the end
Author: xparrot
Recipient: mz_bstone - I hope the McShep and team bonds satisfy!
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard (+ references to Teyla/Kanaan and team gen)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (~22,000 words) (set after 5x14: "The Prodigal") It's Situation Normal for the team when they're caught an avalanche, but digging themselves out uncovers more than they counted on.
Note: Big thanks to my beta (she knows who she is), for the title and the rest.
Part 1
*
"-Give me a few minutes," Rodney told John and Ronon over the radio, as Teyla listened. "Anyway, it'll be better to try anything at the end of the thirty-eight minute window, when the gate's sure to close. Just promise me you two idiots won't play lumberjack with C-4."
"Scout's honor," John replied. "I'll trust Canadian know-how when it comes to lumberjacking."
"I don't even own a flannel shirt, you know," Rodney said, huffily and nonsensically, but he sounded better than he had when he'd first answered the radio. He had told her he would not fall asleep, but exposure and the fatigue of pain would not be making that easy, Teyla knew. And John had realized it, she thought; his tone had changed when Rodney had responded, becoming lighter, needling him to spur retorts, getting his blood and brain moving again.
It was how he usually handled their teammate, when Rodney was under strain: providing another target for his anxiety, stressing him out to paradoxically relax him in the doing. John sounded as he always did, sharp, but with that certain unshakable affection that after this long even Rodney had learned to hear, for all his usual deafness to such things.
Teyla listened, but could hear no difference in what John said to Rodney, in what Rodney answered. It didn't surprise her-a couple months, Rodney had said, and that had not surprised her, either, though she couldn't say why. She had learned something new today, was still learning; yet she did not feel ignorant or foolish, the way she sometimes did when Rodney showed her new technology. Then she might make guesses that were wrong, and be embarrassed when he corrected her (looking surprised, as if he couldn't imagine how anyone could possibly make such a stupid mistake.)
In this, however, she would not make many mistaken guesses; she would often not be wrong. It didn't surprise her that she hadn't realized before this, that she had not considered the question; but it didn't surprise her either, that even knowing, she could hear no differences in their voices now.
"Whoops," John said. "Wraith are on patrol, we have to relocate. Radio silence until we're back on."
"Be careful, John, Ronon," Teyla said quickly.
"Right," Ronon said, with a bit too much irony for her tastes, and they signed off with a hiss of static.
"Teyla?" Rodney sounded nervous.
"I am here."
"Yeah, you are," Rodney said. "I'm tracking you on the LSD, you should be right there. What do you see?"
Teyla stopped walking to look around. She had reached a ridge; the ground was more level here, and the trees had thinned out, those remaining bent and beaten by the wind. But there was no door like the imposing metal ones built into the mountainside; there was nothing.
"Look harder," Rodney said, when she told him so. "There's got to be something."
"These energy readings," Teyla asked, "can you make out their shape?"
"What shape, that's ridiculous, it'd be like trying to paint a beach by listening to the surf-hmm. Actually...give me a second..."
She gave him a hundred, counting them off, before she touched her radio again. "Rodney, what do you have?"
"Almost, hold your-okay, got it. I've adjusted the LSD to differentiate between electromagnetic field resonance through various-well, long story; the short one is I'm a genius. It's not as accurate as true radar but it'll do, I'm building a crude image of where you are..."
"Yes?" she prompted.
"And you're right on top of it. Literally-it goes into the ground directly beneath you. It's big, you should be seeing something. Are you sure-"
"I am," Teyla said. "There is nothing here."
"There is, you just can't see it."
"Then it does not help us." Teyla turned a slow circle, scanning the ground, the muddy snow, the stunted trees. Then she frowned. It might only be her imagination, but... "Can you describe to me the precise dimensions of what you see?"
"Sure. From where you're standing, it's a meter and a half directly east, extending in a straight line for three meters-" He read off the directions, and she paced them in the snow, then stepped back.
While she was walking the outline, it seemed only a strange zigzag path; looking at it complete, she recognized its shape. "Rodney, I do not believe I can enter through this door. I am the wrong form."
"You?" Rodney sounded puzzled. "But you're closer to Michael's form than just about anything else, what with your Wraith DNA-um, sorry, Teyla, that maybe was a little inappropriate-"
"It was, but that isn't what I meant," Teyla said. "Rodney, you said that once the avalanche was triggered, Michael would not have been able to enter his lab, unless he had this backdoor. But it's a long climb up the mountain from the Stargate. Perhaps, then, Michael found it easier not to enter by that way at all, and instead always used his backdoor."
"Okay," Rodney said, "that makes sense. But he'd still have to hike up-"
"No," Teyla corrected, tracing the outline of the backdoor with her eyes, the space between the trees where it would open. Just large enough and no larger; small enough to be almost unnoticeable, even from the air. "Not if he flew. This door is the bay for a Wraith dart."
"Oh," Rodney said, in the disgruntled tone of having failed to figure something out first, and then, "Oh!" in the opposite tone.
She knew what he was going to say before he spoke. John, for all he wasn't a scientist, might often think along parallel (and frequently incomprehensible) tracks to Rodney; it was rarer for Teyla, but an oddly triumphant feeling when she did, to know her mind might fly as fast and far as his. So she smiled when he said, "I have-"
"-An idea," Teyla completed for him, satisfied.
***
"So," John whispered into his radio, "Michael usually flew in through the gate." They'd known he used darts, and it did explain why he'd bothered clearing the forest around the Stargate.
"Always flew, most likely," Rodney said. "The trail up the mountain was a trap. Or maybe the path was there all along, but the door was a trap, anyway; any attempt to enter would set off the avalanche. The sneaky bastard."
"He always was," said John.
"But it works in our favor now," Teyla said.
"Yeah." He'd heard the plan. It wasn't their worst, but that wasn't saying much. "You guys are sure-"
"We are," Teyla said, with that particular patience so flawless that to John it always sounded one step away from homicidal mania. Not that he would ever admit it to Teyla. "As long as you are certain you can deal with the Wraith around the Stargate."
"Four Wraith," Ronon said. He had his blaster in hand; he hadn't holstered it since they had reached the gate's clearing. "No problem."
"Then it is decided," Teyla said.
"Right," John said. "We'll get into position; report in when the Wraith show up there."
"Understood."
John waited a moment, then asked, "McKay?"
"Yes," Rodney replied, "That is, understood-obviously, since it's my plan. Mine and Teyla's, I mean. And not that I have anything to do except try not to get captured by Wraith. But, yes, understood, acknowledged, et cetera."
It was enough words to be reassuring, though John didn't like the brief pause before he had answered, or the rasp in his voice when he had. Winded, like Rodney sounded after hightailing it up twenty flights of stairs, but he hadn't been doing any climbing on that leg. "Rodney, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine," Rodney said shortly, but before John started worrying he elaborated, "Provided one's definition of 'fine' includes sitting under an emergency blanket in sub-zero temperatures with a fractured fibula."
"It's barely below thirty," John informed him.
"Celsius," Rodney retorted.
"Could be worse; could be Kelvin. Hang in there, buddy, this'll be over before you know it."
"Could you maybe sound a little more final?" Rodney snarked. "Don't want to jinx us, after all," and he clicked off.
John switched to a private channel. "Teyla?"
"Yes?"
"How's-" He stopped himself before he asked. Even if Teyla didn't take offense, Ronon, sitting in the underbrush only a few feet away, would hear. And John would never intentionally imply that he didn't trust Teyla, implicitly or explicitly, with his life, with any of their lives. Like he trusted all of them, entirely and completely; it would be betraying them and himself too, if ever they thought he doubted them. "How's it coming, where are you at?"
"I have almost finished planting the charges, according to Rodney's advice," Teyla reported.
"Good."
"John," Teyla said, her voice softening, "Rodney is doing well. He is in pain, but he is not in danger, I don't believe."
"Yeah," John told her. "I know."
"I am watching out for him."
"I know," John said again. "Make sure you watch out for yourself, too."
"Providing you and Ronon attempt to do the same," Teyla said, and switched off before John could call her on the "attempt."
***
The sun was still shining, and the sky showed blue in the gaps between the branches above, but the forest's shade seemed cooler than when they had arrived. Or maybe it was how the wind had picked up. Teyla zipped her parka up to her neck to block the draft. She had never cared for the cold; even as a child, the summer would have to be sweltering before she would willingly swim in the river's fast, freezing currents. Which never had stopped Kanaan or the other kids from pushing her in, but she would always climb out immediately and exact her vengeance on them.
She had been to worlds far colder, had hiked through deeper snow, and her feet and her nose had been more painfully frozen than this before. All the same, she would rather this moment be back on Atlantis, or with her people, or any of a hundred other places. And the voice in her ear wasn't helping. "-then there were the two idiot researchers who went out for a jog and got lost on the ice. By the time they were rescued, one of them lost four toes to frostbite, but hey, that's how it goes in Antarctica, there's a reason no one ever tried to colonize-"
"Rodney," Teyla said, "I do not see what relevance this story has."
"What are you talking about, it's very relevant to our particular...ah. Um. You mean, what's the point. Yeah, I guess you know wilderness survival better than I do, this is...never mind. Sorry. There are Wraith out there, you should probably be maintaining radio silence, too, along with Ronon and Sheppard. So. Consider your silence maintained, starting now."
He sounded slightly offended, but with Rodney, that could as easily be from guilt as insult. Teyla reminded herself that this was her teammate and friend; that Rodney was colder and more miserable than herself, not even able to move to keep himself warm. For all his words came as fast as ever, he would stutter now and again as his teeth chattered, and his tangential rambling sounded more and more like he did after a sleepless night in the lab, when coffee and adrenaline no longer sufficed and only the noise of his own voice was keeping him awake.
Besides, for all that his talk of Antarctica was cold, colder still was the mountainside when all she could hear was the press of her boots on the snow and the wind through the trees. "Rodney," she said across their private channel, "I do not wish that we quit talking, only that we find a topic less chilling."
"Oh," Rodney said. "That makes sense, yeah. ...Um, what do you want to talk about?"
Of all the questions Rodney so eagerly and impatiently asked, this was not one often heard from him, and Teyla swallowed an impolitic chuckle. "Truthfully, I had not considered. What would interest you? That is warming?"
"Hey, you're the one tramping around the woods," Rodney returned. "Whatever you want. Athosian stuff. Or, I don't know, baby stories. What Torren's doing."
"Nothing except sleep, since you saw him yesterday evening," Teyla said. "At least not that I know of, since I came to prepare for this mission before he awoke."
"Sorry," Rodney said hastily. "I didn't mean-you'll be back to see him soon. We'll stop the Wraith and be off this godforsaken mountain and back on Atlantis, where it's warm-"
"Yes," Teyla said.
"Provided there isn't another unscheduled avalanche, or the Wraith don't bring in more reinforcements, or we're not hit by a blizzard, because the sky looks clear now but without accurate atmospheric readings-um. Sorry. I'm not very good at this. Being warming."
"Perhaps not," Teyla said, though her lips curved in a smile that she felt down into her belly, as good as a sip of mulled Ruus wine.
The pause that followed was not coldly silent; Teyla could almost hear Rodney thinking, like the nearly inaudible whir of a computer's fans. Did his brain warm him, she wondered, as computer circuits heated as they processed? Certainly he thought as quick and clear as any computer-louder, too, Ronon would say...
"Teyla," Rodney said, abrupt, and just as abruptly fell quiet again.
"Yes?"
"Are-um. It's a personal question. Sort of. And I don't want to tick you off. So if you don't want to-"
"I will not be offended. Ask, please."
"I hadn't thought about it before," Rodney said, and the forced casualness of his tone should have warned her, "but were there gay people on Athos? Are there any gay Athosians?"
It was not what she had expected; not what she had been thinking about, deliberately. And she had thought Rodney would be too distracted by the cold and his injury and their circumstances; thought that her own opinion would be such a minor bother to him, amidst all the rest. She had underestimated him.
"Teyla?" Rodney asked, and she was not imagining his apprehension, even with his voice tinny and flattened in the tiny radio speaker.
"I have reached the trail," Teyla replied, because she had; or rather, where the trail had been, before the avalanche.
"The Wraith-"
"Are not yet in sight." As planned, they were still a little ways down the mountain, though she could feel their approach, like a bad taste in her mouth she could not swallow away.
The darts, too, were no longer overhead, down at the Stargate with Ronon and John. Teyla stepped out into the open, tramping an obviously visible path across the piled snow and dirt. Even if the Wraith were not practiced trackers-and few were, save those who hunted Runners; most of them preferred easier prey-they could not fail to miss these footprints.
She made it back to the forest's edge before Rodney dared speak again. "Teyla, I'm-I told you, I didn't want to-sorry, can we forget-"
"You didn't offend me," Teyla told him honestly. "I was considering what you asked; I do not need to forget it."
"Oh." He let her consider for a few more seconds as she pushed into the woods, being sure to break a few branches here and there, and stepping in fresh patches of snow that would clearly mark her footprints. "Um, you know what 'gay' means, right? Not everybody talks about-"
"I know, yes," she said. "And no, there were no gay people on Athos. Or, that is, not as you mean gay. There are no Athosians who would only ever have sex with the same as they are."
"Oh," Rodney said quietly, as she had not often heard him sound, bemused and repentant, as if he could not fix what he had sworn he would. She didn't like hearing him sound so; it was so rare to see him completely fail.
"There are those who like to," Teyla told him. "Some more than others, but many of us have found pleasure in the familiarity of another body like our own, in the joy of understanding that which is always a mystery to men-or to women."
"Many of you?" Rodney asked, almost timidly. "You?...um, too personal, I retract-"
"More than once," Teyla said, smiling a little to think of that hot comfort in this cold place. "With two of my women friends, when I was younger."
"Two-at the same time?"
"On one occasion," Teyla said serenely, shaking her head to imagine the wideness of Rodney's eyes; he would be licking his lips now, she thought.
"That's really hot-um, interesting..."
"Kanaan shared the same, with his friends," Teyla said, breaking a trail through frost-stiffened underbrush, the iced branches crackling as she forced through them. "But now we have Torren. And I should bear two more children, by him or another, and Kanaan must father two more, as Athosians, and those with the Gift beside. Until we have, our bodies should not be dedicated to those pursuits with no chance of fruit."
"Hold on, you're going to have two more kids?" Rodney demanded.
"As a woman of Athos, it is my duty to my people." Teyla hesitated. Even with Kanaan, for all they shared and talked about, it was easier not to ask aloud, to hope that these questions might otherwise be resolved, by circumstance rather than conscious decision. "As a woman of Atlantis...I do not know. Your people's numbers are great already, after so long without the Wraith, and you have other needs...we have other needs. Still, the Gift is valuable, as are other gifts. Your mind, as you have told us before. And John's ATA gene-if Atlantis loses such blood, it would be a great loss."
"I know," Rodney said, so immediately that she knew he had his own questions, unasked and unanswered but not unconsidered. "Believe me, I've thought about it-I wanted it. I proposed to Katie. And then, Jennifer-but it didn't work out. It doesn't work out, and I thought it was impossible, it was me, it was...but the SGC has my sperm; hell, they've got my whole genome, pre- and post-ATA modification. If they decide they need a couple mini-McKays for insurance, and Jeannie's spawn aren't interested, they can always whip up a batch. Maybe mix in Sam's genes for good measure, we'd make one hell of a cute...but that's not the point."
"No," Teyla agreed. Her feet and their conversation had carried her to the steeper side of the mountain-Rodney was along this slope, but far enough away that she could not hear his voice except through the radio. Far enough that the Wraith would not notice him, following her trail. "It should not be."
"The point is..." Rodney faltered, took a breath and spoke as if he had to, as if there were a knife to his neck forcing the confession, "I thought it was impossible, but John, John and I...we work. It works. For now, anyway, and maybe...well, for now. So even though I'm not going to be having any kids with him, not unless we make some significant advances in genetics-which isn't out of the question, given Ancient and Asgard technology-but it's not to the point that we've seriously discussed it-"
"Rodney," Teyla said gently, "you owe me no justification. You are not Athosian, and what you have with John is not my concern."
"No?" Rodney asked. "Because no, we're not Athosian, but John and I, we are your teammates, and this-this-what we have, like you said. It's not a team thing, not a usual team thing, anyway."
"And that is important," she said as she began to ascend the incline.
"Hell yes, it's important! Teyla, if you, if Ronon-if you guys aren't okay with this, if the team can't-do you think John would-damn it, you know what this team means to him. And me, too, of course. But John...if it came down to that..." Rodney trailed off, but didn't close the line; she could hear him over it, waited until he said, quietly, "I wanted to tell you before this. You, Ronon, just with you guys, I wanted to talk it over. But John..."
"John does not share his heart easily."
"It's not that he doesn't trust you," Rodney said, sounding desperate. "It's not like that at all, he does, he's just-worse at this stuff than I am, and that's saying something, but he'd never want to-"
"I know. I know John," Teyla told him.
"Yeah. Yeah, you do, you've known him as long as I have, haven't you. Technically I met him first, but we didn't really...not until we came to Atlantis, and we met you the first day, so-"
"Yes, though you know him better, I think," Teyla said, her sentences shortened with her breath as she climbed. "You are both Earth men. Your language, your customs, are the same."
"Canadian really isn't just another way of saying American," Rodney said disparagingly, then conceded, "and besides, knowing about Earth or America or English wouldn't really help you to get John. That's not who he is, not really."
"No," Teyla said. "He is Atlantian. As we are."
"Yeah." Rodney's satisfaction was unmistakable. "That."
He hesitated, and she realized he was gathering his courage, was ready for it when he said, "Teyla-you're part of the team, and if you're not okay with this-with what we're... Look, I know it's not what you signed on for-"
"I was never on a team before this," Teyla said. "I had no expectations for it when I 'signed on.' As for what other expectations I carried, as an Athosian-we are Atlantian now. And I am here."
"Here?"
"In position," she explained, looking across the ridge, to where Michael's dart bay was marked in the snow. "Now we only have to wait."
"And hope the Wraith find the track you left and follow it."
"They have. They are." Teyla did not have to strain to sense them; their presence was a bitter aftertaste on her tongue, a stickiness on her hands that she could not wipe away. The cold air numbed her nose, but on it she imagined she smelled cobwebs and rot. "They are coming."
***
John had a reputation for being a pretty patient guy, but honestly, waiting wasn't among his preferred pastimes. On the scale of flying an F-15 Eagle in clear skies to getting his life sucked out by a Wraith, waiting was about a five on a good day, in a comfy chair, with a handheld game. Waiting crouched in icy bushes, with the cold leaching into his joints and every bruise on top of his other bruises making itself felt when he changed positions, scored markedly lower, even if there hadn't been Wraith to watch.
Ronon was no help; he hadn't moved a muscle in ten minutes, kneeling behind a fallen tree like he had been carved from a twin stump. It was patently unfair, because John knew Ronon hated the waiting game more than him; he had to be sedated if he was going to be stuck in the infirmary more than twenty-four hours. But Ronon knew how to wait when he had to, even if he didn't like it; and when Wraith were around Ronon did what he had to.
So he was startled when Ronon started to speak, his low voice carrying across to John and no further. Two conversations initiated in the same day, that had to be breaking a record. "You and McKay."
No record-the same conversation, resumed. Right. "Yeah."
"You're fucking?"
John shifted, regretted it when his P-90 bumped the sorest spot on his chest. "Sometimes, yeah."
"I asked you when I first came, what was between you and him. You said nothing."
"There wasn't anything," John said. "Not then."
Ronon didn't speak, but his eyebrows raised.
"There wasn't," John insisted, irritated. "I never imagined this would happen, not then. Not between me and Rodney, of all people."
"McKay's not your type?" The English slang sounded natural on Ronon's tongue, as it never did on Teyla's-differences between the Satedan and Athosian languages, or between the individuals speaking them? Or else a glitch in the Stargate translation techno-magic?
Either way, John understood. He shook his head. "More I wasn't Rodney's type. I didn't...my gaydar's always been shit. And I wasn't looking anyway, I wasn't looking for this."
"Didn't think you were."
If Ronon were Teyla, John thought, she probably would be asking him questions now. Not accusing, Teyla was never that direct; but she'd want to know, would be trying to understand. Or else she would understand without asking, as Teyla so often did, but then she would want him to understand, to be sure.
-He was sure, that was what scared the crap out of him; why this had happened at all, when he knew it shouldn't. John had never been great at following the rules but he'd never really been into breaking them, either; just sometimes they got in the way. But he hadn't been thinking of the rules that night, not out on the pier and not back in his quarters-it was always his quarters, Rodney always came over, but that night John had been the one leading them there. The corridors had been empty but they hadn't touched again, not until the doors had closed; being cautious, or maybe just shy.
John had made his share of mistakes in his life; more than his share, when you put waking the Wraith on the scale. Usually he knew when he made them, at the time or else after, even though most of them he'd make again; he hadn't had a choice.
He'd had a choice, with Rodney. But the thing was, it hadn't felt like a mistake. Not then and not later. Not until this moment, squatting in these wintry woods next to Ronon.
He hadn't wanted to say anything. Had wanted to keep that separate from this, personal life and professional duty stowed in different boxes-though seriously, how the hell had he thought that would work, when Rodney and Teyla and Ronon were in both?
Ronon wasn't even looking at him. Teyla might have been, but Ronon was watching the Wraith at the Stargate, not sparing a glance away-maybe he didn't trust John anymore, but he trusted the Wraith a hell of a lot less.
"Look," John said, "if you're not okay with this-"
Ronon didn't turn his head, but his eyes might have flicked to John for an instant. "I could get you in trouble."
"Yeah, you could." He kept his tone low and steady, knew Ronon would hear the challenge in it anyway. "Twice over, for Rodney being a guy, and for him being under my command. You could get me booted out of the Air Force and off Atlantis for good."
Ronon angled his head a degree toward John. "Nah," he said. "You wouldn't stay gone. We need you."
"You know our rules." He had explained them to Ronon, way back when, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' included. Ronon hadn't reacted, no more than usual, just shrugged and said that the Satedan military had had its own codes, that he was used to it. "I signed on, I agreed to follow them."
"McKay didn't."
"Doesn't change the fact that he's a man, and a member of my team." John kept his eyes on the Wraith, like Ronon was, even though the four drones standing guard hadn't moved more than a couple feet since the two of them had gotten in position. They had a mission to do; that was more important. While they were off-world, anyway. He didn't want to think about what might happen when they got back.
"Satedan squads were different," Ronon remarked. "Different rules."
"Yeah, but did those rules include screwing your same-sex teammates?"
"Yeah," Ronon said.
John's head snapped around. "Uh..."
Ronon's shrug was so nonchalant that John couldn't tell if he was being played; cool enough that he might not be. "Satedan military tradition, everyone was supposed to know everyone in their squad. At least a bit."
"'Know' in the Biblical sense?"
"Know in the fooling around sense," Ronon said. "Didn't have to be fucking. Mouth, hands, whatever."
"So your old teammates-Rakai, Ara, Tyre..."
"Yeah."
"Um." John turned back toward the Wraith, flexed his stiff arms while he considered this. In retrospect, he was just as glad Ronon wasn't looking him in the eye. "So, that time you told me you had someone back on Sateda..."
"No," Ronon said. "She...that was different. Not the army. But Tyre, everyone-that was being a soldier."
"A soldier."
"That's how it worked. Know them, know who you're protecting, who protects you. Their bodies were mine; my body was theirs."
"Jesus," John said. He was imagining in spite of himself. Tyre, Ara, and Rakai he'd met, and there'd been two others, too, dead at Wraith hands..."Your whole squad, that was six of you, right? And you all..."
"That's what made a team strong," Ronon said. "A Satedan squad. Kept us close."
"Close, okay." That was one way to put it. Jesus. And he'd thought shared bunks were bad.
"But you're not Satedan," Ronon said. "And McKay's not a solider anyway. You and McKay, it's different."
John could have lied, but Ronon would know. "Yeah, it's different."
Ronon was quiet for a while. "It was weird," he said at last. "When I first joined you guys. I knew other armies weren't like Sateda's, but Atlantis, you were strong. Strong like us, and loyal, too. I didn't get your rules at first."
"But you get them now," John said. The feeling in the pit of his stomach was the same hard knot he got before a mission to a new planet, or before pulling off a flight maneuver he'd only ever tried in simulations. Knowing everything could go to hell in an instant and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it, because he'd already walked through the gate, he'd already put himself in the cockpit.
He'd had that same knot sitting with Rodney on the pier, that single moment after. Rodney had been on his third beer, saying for the thousandth time in two months that it was probably for the best, that he wasn't cut out for that kind of happiness anyway. John had wanted him to shut up, and he could have just said so, he could have put down his own can and walked away, he could have done anything; but he'd leaned over-and god, the look on Rodney's face, two half moons reflecting in his eyes...
John couldn't see what was in Ronon's eyes now; in profile they were inscrutable, fixed on the Wraith eighty feet away. He didn't want to ask-never wanted this question to come up at all, and who cared if denial was the coward's way; he'd never claimed to be brave.
He jerked when his radio crackled, nearly brained himself on a low-hanging branch and fumbled for the button. "Teyla?"
Teyla's voice was harsh, forced low, to only a whispered hiss. "The Wraith are here. They have found the dart bay. Are you ready?"
John glanced at Ronon, his impassive features cracking into a deadly grin. The knot in his own gut was drowned in the flood of adrenaline, warming his stiff limbs. "Yeah, we're ready."
***
The Wraith were too far away for Teyla to be able to hear what they were saying, but she watched the two males confer as their drone soldiers stood watch around the outline of the dart bay. She had made plain tracks to it, and then carefully brushed her others away; the obvious conclusion was that she had somehow entered the bay, and the snow she had cleared away made apparent what sort of bay it was.
"What are they doing? Are they going for it?" Rodney demanded, an anxious whisper in her ear.
"I cannot tell yet." It was hard to get a read on the Wraith's surface thoughts, like trying to identify fish in a pool of murk; and she dared not probe deeper, for fear they might notice her presence. But she attempted to influence them as well she could-Think dart-y thoughts, Rodney had advised, and she tried.
She saw when one of them raised his head, and the sense of summoning was clear. "Yes," she said into the radio, "they are going for it."
"Yeah," John confirmed a second later, "the darts are-damn it!"
"What? What?" Rodney had no need to whisper, being safely distant from the Wraith; his voice was tight and high with apprehension.
"Only one dart left, the other's still here!"
"I see it," Teyla said. The single dart screamed into the sky above the ridge, circled once and then dropped toward the bay, plummeting through the air like a stone.
The Wraith moved out of the way, making room around the bay entrance. When the dart was a little more than a man's height above the ground, it jerked to a halt, just as the earth beneath its shadow suddenly fell away, rocky gray ground parting as neat as Atlantis's transporter doors would slide open. Triggered by the dart's proximity, just as Rodney had predicted.
"The bay is open," Teyla reported, "and the dart is about to enter." She looked up at the sky, but the second dart had not come; still keeping watch at the Stargate. "What should I do?"
"If we don't get it when it enters," Rodney warned, "we don't know what kind of safeguards Michael set up inside..."
"Do it." John was unhesitating; trusting in the plan, in her and Rodney's plan, as he always did. Even when it was not going to plan-John believed they would find a way to make it work. Believed in them, always.
She thought of John on the slope after the avalanche, not digging with them, wandering elsewhere-dazed, she had thought then; but searching, too. Had he guessed Rodney had discarded the life-signs detector? Or else he had not known what he was looking for, but believed in Rodney, believed that there was something to find.
"The dart is entering," Teyla said. "Fire in the hole." She said it less because there was anyone to warn, than because she never had other chances to say it; she rarely held the trigger herself, but now she closed her hand around it.
In the frozen pause after the detonator clicked, Teyla held her breath-one heartbeat, two, and then she saw the flash, heard the boom of the explosion, rocking the dart, knocking the Wraith down. They had unfortunately been too far away to be killed, but the dart, at least, was foundering; the C-4 blasts had pinpointed its engines, crippling if not destroying it.
"It's down," she said, just as over the radio John said, "Yeah, and there goes the other one-Ronon-"
Then, over them, across the mountainside, Teyla heard a grumbling rumble building to a roar, already too familiar from earlier today.
The Wraith, not so experienced, were staring around themselves wildly, jumping to their feet with stunners at ready, but their weapons were useless against the enemy bearing down on them. The snow from the overhang above, destabilized by the earlier avalanche, came sliding down like a whitewater torrent made solid, crashing over the damaged Wraith dart, driving it down into the bay, before it engulfed the Wraith.
This, too, Rodney had predicted, and Teyla had positioned herself on the stone ridge accordingly, out of its path. What he had not predicted was the second Wraith dart, swooping down from the sky just as the avalanche hit. Its white beam flickered over the Wraith on the mountainside, swallowing half of them safely in.
At least she knew the dart was not over the gate, the chance John and Ronon needed-but that was less reassuring than it might be. No sooner had the avalanche slowed, before Teyla dared move from the safety of the ridge, then the dart dove-not back to the Stargate, but rather toward the ridge. Mere yards from where she was hidden, the white beam flashed, leaving five Wraith standing in the snow before her.
Above them, the dart whirled in the air and shot back toward the gate. "John," she warned in a whisper, "it returns," and she switched off her radio.
The dart might trouble John and Ronon, but she had problems of her own. She could feel the Wraith minds, their anger roiling like a storm. They were enraged, and hungry, hunting for whoever had attacked them, knowing she must be close, and Teyla shrank back against the scant concealment of the ridge's granite, praying to the Ancestors that the thunderous pounding of her heart would not give her away.
***
John had already worked out with Ronon who got which Wraith, so the moment the second dart twisted around in the usual uncanny violation of aerodynamics and rocketed off toward the mountain, neither of them wasted a second. They sprang from the underbrush, John aiming at the drone to the left, holding down the trigger until the masked Wraith staggered and collapsed under the P-90's onslaught.
As soon as it was down, he dashed forward, ignoring the other three, confident that Ronon would take them out by the time he reached the DHD. He kept his head ducked low as he ran. A single blue stunner beam rippled past him, but it only zapped a spruce sapling. Then all the Wraith were on the ground, and John was at the DHD, punching in Atlantis's sequence so fast he jammed his fingers.
The whoosh of the wormhole exploding into being was the best damn thing he'd heard all day. He looked into the shimmering blue, hit his radio. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, come in."
"Colonel Sheppard," Woolsey answered; he must have been in the control room, waiting for contact. "What is your-"
"No time," John cut him off. "Wraith have been holding the 'gate, we got to get it open on your end-can you dial us back, pronto?"
"Understood, Colonel," Woolsey said. "The dialing sequence is already set, we'll connect again as soon as it's closed."
"Great." John stepped back from the DHD. The event horizon blinked out as he exhaled, then fountained out again before he could take a second breath.
If the Wraith on the other end were wise to them-he held his breath until his radio crackled. "Colonel Sheppard?"
"Still here," John said. "Make sure you keep the wormhole active until you send the reinforcements. We need a jumper, with drones-we've got one or two Wraith darts, and-" he looked around; Ronon had dispatched the Wraith on the ground with his usual lethal thoroughness, "-maybe ten Wraith."
"Major Lorne's team is heading for the jumper bay," Woolsey replied. They would have been standing by, per the official protocol, since Atlantis had failed to connect. That was the advantage of Mr. Woolsey's red-tape fetish; his adherence to the rules was as reliable as the tides. John had never properly appreciated pencil-pushing before Woolsey, but when navigating the unpredictable maelstrom that was life in Pegasus, bureaucratic pedantry was an airbus-difficult to maneuver and no fun to fly, but it stayed in the air. At times like this, he could almost forgive the endless emails about his tardy mission reports. "Colonel, what is your team's situation-"
"John," Teyla said, "it returns."
John automatically looked to the sky. Ronon didn't bother, charging for the safety of the forest, and John sprinted after him. They made it just as the dart screamed back over the clearing. The shriek of its overcharged engines sounded furious, a temper tantrum, and Ronon was grinning darkly.
"Colonel?" Woolsey was asking urgently.
"Just a little dart trouble," John reported, watching the dart's tight circles over the Stargate. Under the thick tree cover, the dart's scooping beam couldn't reach them. "We're safe. Tell Major Lorne to be ready for a single dart in a lousy mood-forget the cloak, shields up, the moment he's through the gate."
"They're on their way now."
Rodney's voice broke in. "Sheppard? Ronon?"
"Rodney, yeah, we got through-"
"Teyla's not answering me."
John's back stiffened. The sweat raised by their attack on the Wraith was drying on his face, freezing when the wind blew over it. "Teyla? Teyla, come in." Static answered, and John stared at Ronon, touched his radio again. "Rodney, you said the C-4 might trigger another avalanche-"
"It did, but she was out of its way," Rodney said. "And the Wraith weren't, she should have been fine, but now I'm showing multiple signals on the LSD-"
"Sheppard," Ronon said, as the jumper exploded out of the wormhole-and that sight should have been another highlight of John's day, but he was too cold now to care.
***
The Wraith were so close Teyla could smell them, not their illusory presence, but the clammy stench of their ships, their moldering leather coats and the lizard-cool mustiness of their flesh, overpowering the pungent scent of the drooping fir boughs that camouflaged her. She lay flat on her stomach on the granite ridge, and felt like she could not breathe, with that stink filling her nostrils. This perhaps was what Rodney felt in too-small spaces, what he might have felt trapped under the snow this morning, her heart beating so fast and loud she could scarcely think over it.
But the Wraith were searching, and if they found her, they would stun her, leaving her defenseless; they might take her captive, but they as easily might drain her life. She could feel their hunger. They did not care for the cold any more than she did; it sapped their strength, made them slow and sluggish like serpents at night, though they could still strike faster and more powerfully than any human. They wanted strength-her strength, her life.
As she wanted theirs. Slow and silent, Teyla brought down the muzzle of her P-90. The dart's beam had rescued both of the white-haired males; they were the most dangerous, and without them the drones might be so confused that she could escape. One of the males was scarcely a body-length away from where she was concealed. He was turning away in his search, gaze on the ground; he would not have time to react.
Teyla drew a breath of freezing air, deep enough to make her lungs ache, released it in a plume of white mist. Then she pulled the gun's trigger, shoulders braced against its kick. The automatic rounds slammed into the Wraith's gut, sending him staggering back. She let him fall and swept the gun around, slicing the spray of bullets across the nearest drone soldier's legs, cutting into its knees and dropping the Wraith onto the snow.
Two bolts of blue stabbed toward the rock as the other drones brought their stunners to bear, but Teyla had already leapt from it. She hurtled down the mountainside between the trees, skidding and churning up snow, as the furious Wraith behind her gave chase.
***
Lorne knew what he was doing; when the dart fired, the jumper's shields shimmered in a translucent shell around the craft, holding strong. Two drone weapons shot out of its ports, crossed each other in the air and curved toward the dart, so fast they were only golden blurs.
The dart pilot was smart for a Wraith, though; rather than trying to keep up in the outmatched dogfight, it turned engines and blasted off toward the mountains, weaving erratically as a drunk driver trying to walk the line. The drone missiles gamely followed, but one exploded against a stone outcropping and the other took out a lone pine tree, as the dart disappeared behind one of the higher peaks.
"Lorne, come in," John radioed up, as the Stargate flicked out, Atlantis not wasting more energy maintaining the wormhole when the jumper could dial back. Per protocol, naturally.
"Sorry, sir," Lorne answered. "That's one slippery son of a bitch, should we pursue-"
"Forget about it," John ordered, "get down here." He jogged for the clearing, Ronon beside him.
The jumper was touching down when John's radio hissed back to life. "John?"
John almost slipped in the snow. "Teyla!" Beside him, Ronon's stride faltered for a step, and over the radio Rodney echoed John's relief.
"Three Wraith are pursuing me," Teyla said, her words coming short and staccato, the puffing cadence of speaking while running. "I am downhill from the ridge."
"We're coming for you," John told her. "We've got a jumper, we're on our way," and never mind landing; he'd take out some trees with drones if they had to.
"Sir!" Lorne cut in. "The dart's heading back this ways, and our shield's down-"
"Hold on, Teyla," John said, running for the jumper. "Lorne, get that ship back up in the air-"
Ronon made it first, throwing himself through the jumper's rear hatch. It was closing as the jumper lifted off, Lorne always quick in emergencies, and Ronon reached out for John, caught his arm and yanked him inside, as the dart came screaming back at them.
***
"Hold on, Teyla," John told her, as another blue stun beam flashed beside her, surrounding a spruce in coruscating light, every needle bright and defined for a lightning instant, leaving blinding afterimages. Without the breath to reply, Teyla dodged and kept moving, stumbling down the steep slope. She was more sliding than running; the only grace was that the Wraith were no better in the snow than her, floundering behind her, and she thought she might escape.
The next stun beam rippled over a thicket layered in crystalline ice, beautiful as a lattice of glass. Scintillating blue light sparked along her leg as she brushed by it, numbing it from knee to toes, like she suddenly had a block of wood instead of a foot. Her next step came down wrong on that block, and she tripped, tumbling head over heels like an arecace nut tossed on the surf.
The spinning world stopped moving in degrees, from whirling to rocking to settling once more into solid shapes. Teyla tasted blood in her mouth, and her fingers were cramping with cold; one of her gloves was torn, and the snow against her raw palm burned like metal as she pushed herself up.
"Teyla!" someone yelled, and she reached to cover her ears before she realized the voice was in her ear. The radio fizzed as Rodney shouted her name, desperation hoarsening his voice to almost unrecognizable, "Teyla, are you-"
"I am here, I think," she said, sitting up, and looked about herself, just in time to duck the stun beam passing overhead. The shock of the near miss restored her sense, and she scrambled to her feet, circling back behind a slanting pine log to evade the stunners. Her leg was tingling, but it would support her weight; her stomach dipped and twisted, though, throwing her off-balance, so that she had to cling to the tree. "The Wraith are-"
The Wraith was right before her-the male grimaced at her, close enough to bite. She was not armed-the P-90's hook had torn free, its weight gone from her vest, and she had no sticks-but she threw a punch, and kicked out when the Wraith blocked.
He could have had his drones stun her, but Wraith preferred to drain conscious victims, preferred the taste of fear to the bland peace of oblivion. He wanted her awake, thought her prey he could manage, and in that conceit was her chance. The Wraith snarled as Teyla twisted away-there, the P-90 was laying in the snow, black and deadly, and if she could but reach it she would-
The Wraith's blow caught her hard across the face, sent her flying back. "Teyla!" she heard in her ear, through the tinny radio speaker, just before she smashed into the tree. The rough bark scratched open her cheek and the impact set her head spinning again, white ice and dark boughs whirling around her, and the Wraith looming over her, a wavering nightmare. She groped for a weapon instinctively, but he seemed far away, a distant and disconnected dream, too far away to hurt her...
A noise rent the mountain's quiet, shattering the illusion. Teyla heard it without understanding it, but the Wraith reared back, away from her. As she struggled to find her balance, back to the tree, she saw his yellow eyes widen as he turned his head, toward the echoes ringing through the forest.
The next retort she recognized-the sharp burst of a single gunshot, too far down-slope to hit anything, warning shots fired into the air.
Pistol shots. Rodney.
"There's another one," the Wraith snarled. "Find it, have it! Go!" and he waved the two drones toward the gunshots. As they headed off down the slope, he turned back to her, lips pulled back from vicious teeth in a sickening travesty of a smile. "They'll take their health from what they find. You, though, are mine," he hissed, and raised his hand, the slit in the palm gaping like a hideous, bloodless wound.
Teyla's head was pounding, and when she grimaced she felt the blood dripping down her cheek, cooling on her skin. She doubted she looked much more pleasant than the monster before her. "No, I am not," she told the Wraith, and brought up her own arm as the Wraith's hand came down, stabbing the hunting knife in her fist into the feeding slit.
The Wraith snarled, mouth contorting, and slammed his arm around to backhand her, but Teyla had already thrown herself down into the snow. She skidded half her length, far enough for her outstretched hands to clutch the P-90. Rolling onto her back, she fired up, expending the last of the clip into the Wraith's eyes.
The monster screamed and collapsed, clawing at his face as he thrashed on the ground. Teyla wrenched back his arm, pulled her knife from his hand and sliced the blade across his throat, deep. Dark blood poured out onto the snow, silencing the shrieks from the inhuman throat, as Teyla leaned against the tree, fighting for breath.
Rodney was armed, but injured, and there were two Wraith drones coming for him-drawn by his fire, as he had known they would be. Hoped they would be; hoping the distraction would give her a chance.
Only when she automatically reached for her radio did she realize she no longer heard Rodney's voice. The earpiece had been broken when she hit the tree. She could not tell him she lived, could not tell him how many Wraith were hunting him.
She left the Wraith dying in the snow, and ran for her teammate.
***
By the time John crossed to the jumper's cockpit, Lorne had piloted them up above the treetops. As John entered, the major took the jumper into a steep dive, the forest below tilting wildly in the viewscreen. John grabbed for the back of one of the rear chairs, feeling his stomach plummet at the sight even though his feet stayed firm on the floor, thanks to the inertial dampeners.
"It's the dart, sir," Lorne said through gritted teeth. Lieutenant Lee was hunched over the copilot console, controlling two more weapons drones, their trajectories inscribed across the HUD in glowing lines. "It's making a run for-"
The dart arrowed past the viewscreen, flying as straight and true as if it had been the real deal, thrown by a giant in a mile-wide bar game. It passed the jumper at better than mach 2, just as the Stargate below burst to life.
The bastard must have dialed with the onboard DHD, John realized, and then the dart bull's-eyed the wormhole, vanishing into the blue circle. Fifty points, John thought irreverently, as Lorne swore, "Shit!" Then he glanced at his commanding officer, hastily amended, "Sorry, sir-"
"Forget it," John said, "get us up to the ridge, now-"
"Sheppard!" Ronon snapped from the rear compartment, as Rodney's voice came over the radio, "Teyla-I keep trying, she's not answering, but there's two life-signs over there-shit, oh shit, the other two are heading straight this way, if they find me, I can't even walk, I'm a sitting-"
"Rodney," John said urgently, "keep it down, don't draw attention to your position." He took over the HUD with a thought, muttering an apology to Lorne as he focused on the terrain below, mapping sensor data over the visuals of the mountains. He expanded the range until the life-signs appeared-one lone signal, stationary, with two other strong signals closing in on it fast, and another signal heading in the same direction. The final signal at the edge was faint, weakening-if Teyla had lost to the Wraith-
No, the Wraith would have stunned her and left her healthy, or else would have drained all her life, John told himself; they didn't leave leftovers, not when they were fighting. So Teyla would be that single moving dot, heading for Rodney, though she wouldn't make it in time... "Rodney, maintain radio silence, if they can't hear you they might not find you-"
"Sheppard," Ronon called from the back, "how low can we go in this thing?"
John looked at him, then checked the viewscreen and tapped Lorne's shoulder. "Can you manage twenty-five feet? It'd be more than just skimming the treetops."
Lorne's gene was strong and his piloting skills solid; he could fly circles around, say, Rodney, but he never found the jumpers as easy to handle as John did. He nodded now, though, keeping his eyes locked on the display. "Yes, sir, I can."
"Then cut the speed and bring us down. Here," and he pointed.
Lorne nodded again, stiffly with his neck stick-straight. The jumper decelerated in a split second with the usual lack of discernible momentum, drifting in the air only a few yards off-target.
Ronon hit the switch to lower the jumper's back hatch, and the change in wind resistance made them pitch and yaw. "Easy," John said, leaning over the major to get one hand on the controls. Jumpers didn't like serving two masters, but Lorne trusted him enough to release the stick, and John guided the ship lower, between two trees.
In the back, Ronon had unclipped most of the mesh cargo netting, leaving only the rear end attached. He had his blaster drawn, crouching by the hatch as it opened the rest of the way.
"Oh, son of a bitch," Rodney hissed. "This is-John, are you-"
John heard the gunshots twice over, over the radio and, distantly, through the open hatch, the sound snatched and scattered by the wind-four shots and then nothing. "Rodney?" he shouted over the airstream whistling through the jumper's hatch, and screw radio silence anyway, "Rodney, cavalry's here, come in, damn it-"
"I'm going," Ronon announced. Grabbing the nylon netting tight in one hand with his blaster in the other, he took a flying leap out of the back of the jumper, bellowing a challenge to the Wraith or the wind as he swung out over the forest.
***
She was bruised and bleeding, running as fast as she believed she could manage in the snow and with her lungs aching, but the new pistol shots crashing through the snowy forest sped Teyla's feet. Further down the slope-much further, too far-she saw a flash of blue through the trees, and then there was no more gunfire.
Rodney-the drone soldiers were hungry with the cold; they wouldn't waste any time feeding. Teyla could have cried out in her helplessness, but she had no breath to spare. Her fingers closed around her P-90 as she ran-she would not be too late for vengeance, at least, bitter consolation though that was.
With all her mind and body devoted to the race, she did not hear the noise above her, did not register the downdraft beating against her as anything more than the freezing mountain winds. She did not realize they were no longer alone until she heard the howl, so defiant even the wind couldn't steal it away, a roar no Wraith could make-only one man could, that she knew.
When she came stumbling through the icy bracken some moments later, she was not surprised to find the two Wraith drones flattened on the ground, and Ronon standing over them. At the crunch of her boots he whirled around, his blaster's energy cell glowing red behind his fist.
Teyla froze and raised her hands, knowing his weapon would not be set to stun now. Ronon's eyes widened for an instant; then his expression cooled and hardened like molten metal plunged into a bucket of water. He holstered his blaster, said, "You took out the Wraith."
"Yes," Teyla said, and hurried past him. "Rodney-"
"They didn't get to him," Ronon said, following her toward the wide spruce she had left Rodney under. "Must be stunned, if he's this quiet."
Rodney lay under the prickly boughs, eyes closed and still enough that Teyla's breath caught, until she saw he was still breathing. When she checked his pulse, it was steady and strong, though the skin of his throat was cool to her touch.
He was still holding his sidearm, even stunned; Ronon picked it up out of his lax fingers, put it back in his thigh holster. "One of them was already shot half-dead," he said, and added, as if Rodney could hear him, "Not bad, McKay."
Teyla tilted up her head, seeing through the branches to the boxy tube of the jumper against the sky. "How do we get him to it?"
Ronon cocked his head. "Carry him, I guess."
"Hold it!"
Teyla looked up again. John was clambering down the black mesh netting hanging from the back of the jumper. It ended somewhat more than his height above the ground; he let himself dangle from it, dropped the final few feet into the thick snow bank and climbed out, brushing off the white flakes. "Tell me that looks worse than it is," he ordered, pointing at her face.
Teyla touched her cheek, where the blood had dried stiff and sticky; she had quite forgotten the cut. "It is. I am all right."
"Good. How is he?" he asked, kneeling by Rodney, pulling off his glove to check his pulse, just as Teyla had done, though John's hand lingered for a moment longer, fingers curving gently against the line of Rodney's jaw.
"Stunned," Teyla said, "but no worse than that; the Wraith did not touch him."
John stood again, waved up at the jumper and said, "Throw it down," into his radio. A moment later a bundle of netting and more dropped into the snow. John unfolded the portable travois, said to Ronon, "None of Lorne's team wants to come down, they're all scared of not measuring up, after your Tarzan impression. Kind of a hard act to follow."
Ronon shrugged. "Wasn't trying to measure up," he said, though the gleam in his eye said otherwise.
He and John moved Rodney onto the travois in one quick, efficient lift, careful with his splinted leg; then they were left with the puzzle of hooking it up to the netting. As they untangled the nylon strands, John explained the events down at the Stargate, and the dart's escape. "Which is why we have to hurry," he said, glancing up at the sky, "before they're back with reinforcements."
They had almost completed readying the netting when Rodney awoke, blinking up at them. "Okay," he said hoarsely. "Not dead, then?"
"Not yet," Ronon told him cheerfully.
"None of us. Don't sit up," John warned, putting one hand flat on his chest to keep him down. "Take it easy, you'll be back on Atlantis before you know it."
"Just tell me it'll be warm," Rodney begged.
"I'll warm you up myself," John said flippantly, and then abruptly snatched away his hand. His teasing face had gone still, eyes dark with shame, or something like it.
Rodney's eyes had slid shut again; he didn't notice. "Hold you to that," he mumbled.
John looked at her, at Ronon. Then he shook his head, gaze falling back to Rodney as if he were too tired to lift it away. "Yeah," he said, so quiet Teyla hardly heard it.
"John," Ronon said, and John's head came up again, fast as if he were blocking an attack, but his eyes remained unreadable.
Teyla was dizzy with fatigue, giddy with relief, with the knowledge that she lived, and Rodney and John and Ronon, too. She did not think she could run another step, but John at this moment might have been on the mountain's peak. Too far away for her to chase after him, and her heart ached like her legs, like her lungs.
But Ronon had the strength left that she did not. "I get your rules now," he told John, matter-of-factly. "They're stupid. Sateda's, too."
John stared at him. Ronon's shrug included the mountain, the jumper, the four of them. "It's what we do out here that counts," he said. "Who we protect, who's protecting us. So yeah, McKay's yours. And you're his. And he's mine, and Teyla's his."
Teyla did not need to know why he was saying this to understand his meaning, nor to see the comprehension in John's eyes, the hope. She reached out, took John's gloved hand in hers. "We are yours," she said, "and you are ours. Both of you. Whatever else might change, this does not-you cannot change it."
John ducked his head, turned aside, but he did not pull his hand free right away, and his fingers curled around hers, squeezed before letting go. Then he patted Rodney's shoulder. "Hey, Sleepy, you up for a ride?"
Rodney's heavy eyelids dragged open. "Wazzntslee...Ride?"
"Need to lift you up to the jumper. Just hold still, you'll be fine."
"What? This-"
"No sitting up," John warned again, reaching over him to buckle the travois's straps across his shoulders.
Rodney turned his head, examined the netting and travois set-up, his eyes expanding to white-rimmed panic. "I don't think this is-"
"You'll be fine," John said, then leaned over him. "And I'll be making it up to you later, as promised," he murmured, turning their faces close for a moment, before pulling away.
Ronon grinned, poked Rodney's head. "Come on, McKay, aren't you ready to get off this mountain?"
"Well, if you put it that way..."
John radioed up to the jumper, and the netting stretched, the travois lifting off the ground. It swayed, and John steadied it with one hand.
"Um, not this ready-!" Rodney yelped.
"You will be fine, Rodney," Teyla called up, as he was pulled above their heads. Truthfully, she wished she might be borne up the same way; climbing the netting would be rough on her cold-numbed fingers. But then they would be in the jumper, and then they would be home, with Kanaan and Torren, and her kettle-she would not at this moment like to choose which she more desired to hold, her son, or a steaming cup of tea.
"So." John rocked back on his boot heels. "A secret lab, two avalanches, two darts, a dozen Wraith-and we're still here."
"All four of us," Teyla said, glancing up at the travois swinging between the treetops. Rodney's fretful chatter carried thinly over the wind, anxious but constant; they did not need to hear his words to know he would be well.
Ronon stretched like he was waking from a nap. "So, we still got it?"
John, looking between them, broke into a grin as unexpected and overwhelming as an avalanche.
"Yes," and Teyla heard the laughter in her voice echo off the trees, melt into the snow. "We do."
the end