Fic: Because it is bitter
Title: Because it is bitter
Author: ceitie
Category: Gen
Rating: R for bad language
Spoilers: Up until Phantoms
Recipient: dearjoanwallace
Summary: Rodney stumbled along, hurrying through the dark. It had started out as such a good day.
Author’s Note: This is for dearjoanwallace who asked for a McKay centred story with teaminess, plot and maybe some h/c. The title of the story is from Stephen Crane’s poem, “IN THE DESERT”. Thanks to blacknoise for the last-minute beta!
The Wraith had come, and he was running, running, breath sawing in and out in huge gasps, the dart’s high-pitched drone growing louder and louder and then he saw the glow of the beam out of the corner of his eye. He dodged, but Ford was in front of him, grinning, black eye shining madness and his P-90 raised. Rodney felt the impact of the bullets, hot hard familiar pain, and he was falling into the beam.
The klaxons were blaring, the gate shield flickered then disappeared completely. Wraith began to pour through, stunning the soldiers who fired again and again but the Wraith kept advancing, stepping on the bodies of their fallen. Elizabeth stood next to him in the gateroom, staring down at the battle in horror. Sheppard was there too, and Teyla and Ronon and Carson and Radek and the whole of Atlantis was there, frantic and yelling. And they turned to him, they demanded, McKay, do something! But Rodney was itchy all over and his throat was closing up and he slid to the floor, clawing at the consoles, struggling for air, as they stood over him and screamed at him to save them.
He stood next to grounding station three, drenched to the bone. Ronon held Kavanagh pinned as Sheppard gripped his arm and carved into it with his knife, blood falling like raindrops. Rodney knew that he was ever-so-carefully inscribing the word ‘traitor’ into Kavanagh’s skin, and he couldn’t hear the man’s shrieks over the howling of the wind.
The numbers were wrong, all wrong and he couldn’t type fast enough, couldn’t rewire and adjust and take back control, and it just didn’t make sense, it shouldn’t be happening, and the flash of the explosion was blinding as Atlantis burned around him.
Kolya shot Elizabeth in the head. The blood spatter was warm on Rodney’s face.
They found Sheppard’s body in the clearing, but it crumbled to dust when Carson touched it.
The water was rising.
And then he was leaning against a boulder, shaking and clutching at it like a drowning man. Like the drowning man he had been only seconds before. Or at least, that he believed he had been, and hey, what do you know, being aware of the fact that the drowning was all in your head didn’t actually stop the panic of not being able to breathe.
He gasped for air, sank to the ground and put his head between his legs, trying to control his hyperventilation. He wished he had a paper bag to breathe into, despite vaguely remembering Carson’s dismissal of such a tactic in favour of counting breaths and something about pursed lips. Rodney shook and panted and decided that when he got back to Atlantis, he was going to talk Teyla into helping him make some kind of bone necklace and feathered headdress for Carson, to properly befit his position as Atlantis’ Chief Witchdoctor.
He closed his eyes and dug his hands into the sandy dirt, and his breathing slowly evened out. He still shook, from fear and adrenaline as well as from the cold wind that chilled his skin and made him curl more tightly against the boulder. The desert stretched in front of him, rocks and scrubby brush that were probably teeming with poisonous nightlife, waiting in the shadows for unsuspecting scientists. Rodney sighed deeply and pushed himself to his feet; he checked his equipment and weapons with trembling hands, reassuring himself that he hadn’t lost anything that time. The life signs detector had been dropped somewhere during the first - hallucination? vision? - but he hadn’t been stupid enough to hold anything in his hands since.
Once everything had been accounted for, he started to trudge toward the tiny hut where they had drank the wedding toast, following his own tracks back the way he had come in his latest burst of debilitating insanity. The wide, clear sky with its stars and four moons in various phases was the only piece of good luck he’d had all night, because otherwise he was pretty sure he’d be stumbling around in the desert for the rest of his short, thirsty life. He took a drink out of his canteen to dismiss the sudden image of his desiccated body crawling through an endless expanse of nothing but rocks and more rocks. His stomach rebelled slightly, but the water stayed down; although if the hallucinations began again any time soon, it wouldn’t be long before it spilled onto the sand instead.
Rodney stumbled along, hurrying through the dark. It had started out as such a good day.
The village on PX5-398 had been, for once, everything Teyla promised it would be, without any surprise underground bunkers, weird religious rituals, or civil wars. Teyla had visited the village as a child with her people, and Ethnei, the leader of the village council, greeted her like an old friend, inviting her and the rest of the team to the large adobe-like building that served as a sort of town hall.
Even better, from Rodney’s point of view, was the presence of four energy signatures on the outskirts of the village. Rodney had been excited enough that he had kept his complaining about the planet’s indescribably hot climate to a minimum. None of the signatures were powerful enough to indicate a ZPM, but acquiring alien technology was their primary objective and surely more important than a standard village meet-and-greet, a fact which Sheppard and Teyla tragically refused to acknowledge. They did promise to ask the villagers about the energy signatures at the first available opportunity. ‘First available opportunity’ apparently translated into diplomat-speak as ‘after we’ve eaten the complimentary lunch and spent an eternity making polite chit-chat’.
Finally, Teyla asked about the signatures, and the smile dropped off Ethnei’s wrinkled face. She and the other councilors exchanged looks around the table, faces gone abruptly solemn and wary. Instead of answering, Ethnei rose from the table and gestured at Teyla to join her. With a glance at Sheppard, Teyla followed her into a corner of the adobe that had been partitioned off by a heavy curtain. Rodney and Sheppard had both edged forward on their woven stools, trying to catch some of the conversation, only to back away from the disapproving glares of the women still remaining at the table.
Ronon proceeded to ignore the whole thing, steadily eating the scraps of food still left on the clay platters that they had been given for lunch. Rodney slapped his hand away from his own shish-kabob-thing, and watched the curtain in trepidation.
“I’ll bet you three bags of coffee and a Twix bar that whatever’s producing those energy signatures has some kind of oh-so-important religious significance, only the worthy may enter, blah-blah-blah embarrassing ritual,” Rodney said under his breath.
Sheppard leaned back in his chair, grinning, and muttered, “That’s a sucker’s bet,” through his smiling teeth. “Look on the bright side, Rodney, even if there is a ritual, it can’t possibly be as bad as the one on the body-piercing planet.”
Ronon snorted around a mouthful of mushroom-and-bean pastry and reached across the table with one long arm to grab the communal soup bowl. Rodney shifted uncomfortably in his seat and resisted the urge to clutch at his nipple protectively, opting to glare at Sheppard instead.
Teyla reappeared from behind the curtain before Rodney could bring up the planet with the giant pigeon wrestling, which was perhaps for the best because Sheppard had been very scary and descriptive about exactly what he would do to anyone who mentioned PR4-365 ever again.
Teyla was still smiling, although she looked a little strained. Rodney braced himself.
She said, “The Kanoin are willing to let us examine their temples which are producing the energy signatures, but first - ”
Rodney groaned, Sheppard winced and even Ronon stopped eating long enough to stare up at Teyla plaintively.
Teyla narrowed her eyes at them and continued, “But first I must marry into Ethnei’s family.” She was already shaking her head and speaking again before any of them actually moved past wide eyes and gaping mouths into verbal protests.
“It is only a symbolic joining of two peoples, not any kind of true binding. The ceremony will take place tomorrow, after which we can return to Atlantis. When we return to the Kanoin after one full cycle of the moons, we will be considered family and will be given the opportunity to see the source of your energy signatures, Dr. McKay.”
Rodney nodded and started to relax, only for Teyla to continue with a certain dogged serenity that Rodney just knew she was faking. “There is, however, a simple ritual that we, as the visiting wedding party, must complete before the wedding.”
Rodney let his head hit the table with a thud, and Sheppard kicked him in the ankle, muttering, “You’re not really impressing the council ladies here, McKay. Quit it.”
Teyla was glaring at him when he raised his head. He sneered back, but manfully refrained from any comments about how much he had totally called this.
“All we must do is drink a wedding toast in the one of the village’s temples, and remain there for the rest of the night before the wedding. I am certain we will be able to complete it without much hardship,” Teyla said dryly.
Rodney smiled thinly back at her. Sheppard shrugged and said, “So, basically a bachelorette party, without the lingerie and male strippers? We can handle that.”
“We are so very doomed,” said Rodney.
“I love weddings,” said Ronon.
For a while it had seemed that his prediction had been overly pessimistic. They spent the rest of the day negotiating a trade agreement, which on Sheppard, Ronon and Rodney’s parts consisted of snacking and nodding supportively along with Teyla’s suggestions. Rodney managed to distract himself from total boredom by fantasizing about Teyla and her spouse-to-be after it was mentioned that Teyla’s fiancée was actually Ethnei’s daughter, a pretty, curly-haired woman in her thirties. Sheppard kept poking him every time his eyes got too glazed over, so he never really got that far into the good stuff, but it was better than listening to a three hour long haggle over squash vegetables and aspirin.
They walked up to the temple at dusk, the day’s heat still lingering in the air, dust from the path swirling up in small puffs around their boots. The temple turned out to be a tiny hut with a roof made of cracked red tiles that looked like it could collapse at any moment. The four of them just squeezed inside, and Rodney wondered what they would have done if their ‘wedding party’ had been bigger than four people. He lowered himself onto the woven mat on the floor, grimacing at the dead insect in the corner. He tried to get comfortable, leaning against the wall and stretching his legs out, but he already knew his back was going to be one tense mass of pain by the next morning.
His team settled themselves on the floor as well, and Teyla placed the small bowl of wine-coloured liquid that she had carefully carried up to the hut on the floor between them.
Sheppard leaned forward and picked it up. “Might as well get this part over with, I guess.” He took a long drink, and raised his eyebrows. “Huh. Not bad.”
He passed the bowl to Rodney, who took it reluctantly. “I can’t tell you how incredibly unhygienic this is. You didn’t detect any hint of citrus, did you?”
Ronon nudged his shoulder. “Just drink it, McKay.”
He took a gulp from the bowl. Sheppard was right, it wasn’t bad: cool and sweet, although it had a harshly bitter aftertaste. He figured it was only mildly alcoholic.
Ronon surprised him by raising the bowl up before he drank, saying seriously, “May the Ancestors bless your union.” Teyla nodded gravely in reply and finished off the remainder of the bowl. She placed the bowl next to her pack and sat back, her hands resting on her crossed legs.
There was silence for a moment, then Ronon asked, “So, now what?”
Sheppard reached into his pack and pulled out a pack of cards. Rodney shook his head and reached for his laptop while the other three started playing one of Sheppard’s insane card games. Rodney was 97.9% certain that Sheppard made up his games on the spot, as they tended to have rules like ‘food-throwing and kicking are allowed as distraction tactics, but not licking’ and ‘anyone who says the word “it” twice in the same sentence has to forfeit two of their cards to the shortest person in the game’.
Rodney had just noticed that one of the mysterious energy signatures was actually very close to their hut, less than five hundred feet away, and was calculating his chances of convincing Sheppard to wander off and maybe accidentally wander in to the area where the signature was coming from, when it all went to hell.
The hallucinations didn’t start gradually, sliding in like needles under skin the way they had on M1B-129, didn’t build up slowly from skewed bits of reality, memory and illusion. Rodney went from sitting uncomfortably in a shack surrounded by his teammates to being wrapped tight in a cocoon on a hive ship, a Wraith looming over him.
The Wraith’s hand slammed into his chest and he threw back his head in agony, mouth stretched wide and silent.
Then he was staring at Radek and Ford as blood poured from their ears and noses and they crumpled to the ground, trying to fight off terrifying shadows.
His parents were howling imprecations at each other, words he hadn’t understood as a seven-year old, and his mother flung a heavy marble clock that hit his father’s temple and his father was on the floor and there was blood everywhere.
The visions melded into each other seamlessly, shifting from scene to scene like the worst of Rodney’s nightmares, the ones he never talked about with Heightmeyer. He ran and fought and screamed and cried until the visions stopped as suddenly as they had started, and Rodney dropped to his knees and threw up all over the sandy ground. He had collapsed onto his side and scrabbled away from the mess he had made, half-sobbing in shock and fear.
“Fuck, fuck, oh god,” he had grated the words out between gasps, a steady stream of profanity and invocations, trying to calm himself with the familiar sound of his own voice.
It took him a while, that first time, to reorient himself, to remember that he was off-world and supposed to be in a hut performing a moronic ritual with his teammates. Instead, he was lying on his side in the middle of nowhere, with no hut or teammates anywhere in sight. He’d lost the life signs detector as well, and had felt a rush of cold panic before noticing the trail of footprints he had left behind him. He had dragged himself to his feet, ignoring his shaky legs, and began the walk back to the hut, wanting nothing more then to find his teammates and get the hell away from this shitty planet and back to Atlantis’ infirmary.
Since then, the horrible visions had returned twice, reducing him to a shivering, panicked wreck on the rocky desert soil, and his erratic running during the delusions was probably taking him further and further from the hut. Rodney had scratches on his face and hands that had most likely been caused by tearing through plants, bruises from hitting rocks and the ground, he was exhausted and head-achy and he would have given just about anything to be not quite so alone anymore. He kept walking.
When he finally saw the outline of the hut in the distance, below the curve of the hill he was edging down, Rodney nearly leapt for joy. Would have, were it not for the fact it would have caused him to lose his footing and end up as a bloody heap at the bottom of the rocks. Then he saw the figure standing outside the hut, watching his descent, and his heart jumped into a pounding rhythm until he recognized Teyla’s slender form. The relief that rushed through him was embarrassingly vast, but at the moment he couldn’t care less.
“Teyla,” he called out, and was surprised by how hoarse his voice sounded.
She walked forward to meet him. “Rodney,” she said, sounding just as desperately relieved as he felt. Once he got close enough, he could see how drawn and miserable she looked, but she grasped his shoulders and touched his forehead in the Athosian greeting before he could stammer out an attempt at sympathy.
Teyla led him into the hut, not releasing her hold on his arm. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her so shaken before, and it was throwing off his own equilibrium. The inside of the hut was dimly lit by the small flashlight on the ground, casting webs of shadows on the walls. Some of the sleeping bags had been spread out across the floor of the hut, and Teyla lowered herself to sit, crossing her legs and gesturing for him to do the same. It was a sudden gift to be out of the cold breeze, out of the desert and back somewhere at least vaguely familiar, with Teyla’s calming presence and concerned eyes so close by.
“Are you - all right?” Rodney asked. He wasn’t sure how to bring up the hallucinations.
Teyla met his eyes. There was more sorrow on her face then Rodney could deal with, and he looked away. He raised his eyes when he felt her soft touch on his sleeve.
“I am fine, Rodney. The visions were terrible, but- ”she hesitated, then continued, “But there was nothing in them that was not already inside of me.”
He nodded, not entirely sure he understood, but unwilling to discuss the content of the hallucinations in any depth.
“I wonder if it’s the drink that causing them, or maybe something to do with energy signatures, or even a combination of both.” He would have been pissed at the villagers who had sent them up into the hills to have some kind of half-assed ritual acid trip, but he was just too tired to work up any serious anger at the moment.
Teyla seemed equally worn out; she shook her head with weary disinterest. “I am not sure. The Kanoin certainly did not say that the ritual would be so - difficult. I do not believe that whatever we are experiencing is the ritual’s intended form.”
Rodney shrugged and leaned against the wall of the hut. He closed his eyes and was already half-asleep when Teyla spoke again.
“I have found that meditation appears to mitigate the effects of the visions, and allows me to retain a greater awareness of what is real,” she said quietly. In most circumstances, Rodney wouldn’t have hesitated to explain that not only was meditation a bunch of New Age mystical crap, he was also pretty sure he would be terrible at it. Aching and exhausted in a cold hut, staring at the tiny flashlight that was the only thing keeping them from sitting in pitch blackness, he only nodded.
He didn’t open his eyes, but he tried to relax his body and drive away the images that he had been reliving in technicolour and surround sound. When that failed, he began running through equations in his head, casting his mind back to various problems that awaited him in his lab on Atlantis.
The hallucinations arrived again just as he finally achieved some form of relaxation, breathing slowly in tandem with Teyla and focusing on jumper modifications rather than the chittering noise the Replicators had made as they flowed over Elizabeth’s prone body, ripping it to pieces. Unexpectedly, Teyla was right about the hallucinations losing some of their force; of course, whatever was causing them could simply be wearing off, it wasn’t necessarily because of his reluctant attempt at meditation. In either case, Rodney didn’t feel quite so immersed in the scenes that splashed vibrantly across his mind, and he remained distantly aware the entire time of the ground beneath him and the hard clutch of Teyla’s hand on his own.
She didn’t let go of his hand once the visions had ended, allowed him to clasp her small, cool hand with his most likely sweaty fingers, and Rodney felt a rush of warmth for her that lasted until a halting shout from outside made them both jump.
They stared at each other for a moment, then Rodney blurted out, “That was Sheppard,” and Teyla was on her feet and out the door while Rodney was still trying to force his shaky limbs to cooperate. He followed her out into the night, suppressing his groans over his body’s stiffness. Teyla was a darting silhouette against the pale landscape, and Rodney stumbled after her and prayed that he wouldn’t run into a giant hole or a rattlesnake or something.
They found Sheppard near the edge of a steep ravine. By the time Rodney reached them, out of breath and trying to hide it, Teyla was already helping Sheppard to his feet.
“Rodney, hurry please, he has injured his ankle,” she said breathlessly, already sagging from the effort of supporting Sheppard’s much taller and heavier body.
Rodney quickly moved around to Sheppard’s other side and got his left arm around his shoulder, taking most of Sheppard’s weight. Teyla sent him a brief look of gratitude and Sheppard rasped, “Hey, McKay. Long time, no see.”
Rodney rolled his eyes, but before he could make any comments about the fact that Sheppard was definitely overplaying the ‘cool guy’ role at this point, a sideways glance got him a good look at Sheppard’s face.
“You look like crap, Colonel. How on earth did you get a black eye?” Sheppard was white and grim from pain and the bruise already stood out clearly against his skin.
Sheppard shrugged as much as he could with his arms slung over their shoulders.
“Not sure. Could be from a rock, or a tree, or hell, maybe one of you guys when we all freaked out and ditched the hut. Are we heading back there any time soon, by the way? I could really use some water.” Sheppard shifted his leg and winced. “And possibly some aspirin.”
They set off back towards the hut at a slow, uneven pace; Sheppard’s limp made every step jolting and awkward, and Rodney and Teyla’s disparity in height didn’t help matters. Rodney kept up a constant stream of mainly one-sided conversation revolving around the how and why of their hallucinations, the most likely theory being that the energy signatures that they were picking up were coming from Ancient devices that had been activated by Sheppard’s presence and were affecting their mental processes. Teyla made absent affirmative noises and Sheppard just grunted. However, they reached the hut without anyone falling down a gully or being attacked by giant tarantulas, so Rodney decided to count it as a win.
He collapsed on top of one of the sleeping bags inside the hut as Teyla wrapped Sheppard’s ankle and gave him an ice pack. Rodney managed to rouse himself long enough to dig a bottle of aspirin out his pack and hand it along with a canteen to Sheppard, who took it with a nod of thanks.
Rodney fell back onto the sleeping bag, unable to face making another attempt at meditation. If the hallucinations came back, Teyla and Sheppard would probably be able to keep him grounded anyway, and being asleep was nearly the same as being very relaxed and Zen, right? He drifted off to the soft sounds of his teammates’ voices as they discussed whether or not Teyla should go searching for Ronon.
He woke up when Ronon staggered into the hut as the sky was beginning to lighten outside. Rodney was still achy and bone-weary, but now he was also warm and a little hungry instead of nauseous. He was laying on his stomach half in and half out of a sleeping bag, hand curled around something warm that turned out to be Teyla’s wrist. He could see her hair and shoulders and hear the soft sighing noises that meant she was asleep. When he turned his head to see Ronon come in, he confirmed that the solid press against his shoulder was Sheppard, who sat propped against the wall of the hut. He was pale and almost entirely engulfed by a sleeping bag, but still kept watch through drooping eyes.
Ronon stood in the doorway to the hut, staring at them. Although his expression was nearly blank, Rodney thought that he saw something behind it that was - yearning, perhaps. He lifted the hand that wasn’t holding Teyla’s wrist to give a lazy wave, and mumbled something that was meant to be welcoming.
Sheppard, thankfully, was a little more coherent. “Ronon. You okay, buddy? Come sit down.”
Ronon stared for a few seconds, like he wasn’t certain that he had found the right hut. Then he walked in and slumped onto the sleeping bag next to Teyla’s, turning his flat stare to the ceiling.
Sheppard asked again, “You okay?”
The silence stretched out, and Rodney was mostly asleep again and thought Ronon wasn’t going to answer. He blinked, startled, when Ronon said softly, “Nightmares.”
“Yeah,” said Sheppard, “yeah, us too.” He hesitated, then said, “Rest, if you can. We’ve got a wedding to attend tomorrow.”
Rodney buried his head further into the sleeping bag. He had completely forgotten about the wedding.
“That’s going to be fun,” said Ronon, without inflection.
Sheppard sounded like he’d be amused if he wasn’t about to pass out. “It can’t be worse than my wedding.”
Curiosity immediately erupted in Rodney’s sleep-deprived brain, and when almost a minute had gone by in silence, he couldn’t restrain himself.
“Why? What happened at your wedding?”
He could hear Sheppard grinning when he replied, “I didn’t go.”
“Please, let us all sleep for a time,” said Teyla in a croaky, muffled voice. They quieted down, though Rodney made a mental noted to start poking at Sheppard about his supposed wedding at the soonest possible moment. He closed his eyes again and stroked the smooth skin on Teyla’s wrist, listened to Ronon’s slow breathing. They were here, and safe, and together, and in the morning they would go to Teyla’s wedding.
Rodney slept.
##
Author: ceitie
Category: Gen
Rating: R for bad language
Spoilers: Up until Phantoms
Recipient: dearjoanwallace
Summary: Rodney stumbled along, hurrying through the dark. It had started out as such a good day.
Author’s Note: This is for dearjoanwallace who asked for a McKay centred story with teaminess, plot and maybe some h/c. The title of the story is from Stephen Crane’s poem, “IN THE DESERT”. Thanks to blacknoise for the last-minute beta!
The Wraith had come, and he was running, running, breath sawing in and out in huge gasps, the dart’s high-pitched drone growing louder and louder and then he saw the glow of the beam out of the corner of his eye. He dodged, but Ford was in front of him, grinning, black eye shining madness and his P-90 raised. Rodney felt the impact of the bullets, hot hard familiar pain, and he was falling into the beam.
The klaxons were blaring, the gate shield flickered then disappeared completely. Wraith began to pour through, stunning the soldiers who fired again and again but the Wraith kept advancing, stepping on the bodies of their fallen. Elizabeth stood next to him in the gateroom, staring down at the battle in horror. Sheppard was there too, and Teyla and Ronon and Carson and Radek and the whole of Atlantis was there, frantic and yelling. And they turned to him, they demanded, McKay, do something! But Rodney was itchy all over and his throat was closing up and he slid to the floor, clawing at the consoles, struggling for air, as they stood over him and screamed at him to save them.
He stood next to grounding station three, drenched to the bone. Ronon held Kavanagh pinned as Sheppard gripped his arm and carved into it with his knife, blood falling like raindrops. Rodney knew that he was ever-so-carefully inscribing the word ‘traitor’ into Kavanagh’s skin, and he couldn’t hear the man’s shrieks over the howling of the wind.
The numbers were wrong, all wrong and he couldn’t type fast enough, couldn’t rewire and adjust and take back control, and it just didn’t make sense, it shouldn’t be happening, and the flash of the explosion was blinding as Atlantis burned around him.
Kolya shot Elizabeth in the head. The blood spatter was warm on Rodney’s face.
They found Sheppard’s body in the clearing, but it crumbled to dust when Carson touched it.
The water was rising.
And then he was leaning against a boulder, shaking and clutching at it like a drowning man. Like the drowning man he had been only seconds before. Or at least, that he believed he had been, and hey, what do you know, being aware of the fact that the drowning was all in your head didn’t actually stop the panic of not being able to breathe.
He gasped for air, sank to the ground and put his head between his legs, trying to control his hyperventilation. He wished he had a paper bag to breathe into, despite vaguely remembering Carson’s dismissal of such a tactic in favour of counting breaths and something about pursed lips. Rodney shook and panted and decided that when he got back to Atlantis, he was going to talk Teyla into helping him make some kind of bone necklace and feathered headdress for Carson, to properly befit his position as Atlantis’ Chief Witchdoctor.
He closed his eyes and dug his hands into the sandy dirt, and his breathing slowly evened out. He still shook, from fear and adrenaline as well as from the cold wind that chilled his skin and made him curl more tightly against the boulder. The desert stretched in front of him, rocks and scrubby brush that were probably teeming with poisonous nightlife, waiting in the shadows for unsuspecting scientists. Rodney sighed deeply and pushed himself to his feet; he checked his equipment and weapons with trembling hands, reassuring himself that he hadn’t lost anything that time. The life signs detector had been dropped somewhere during the first - hallucination? vision? - but he hadn’t been stupid enough to hold anything in his hands since.
Once everything had been accounted for, he started to trudge toward the tiny hut where they had drank the wedding toast, following his own tracks back the way he had come in his latest burst of debilitating insanity. The wide, clear sky with its stars and four moons in various phases was the only piece of good luck he’d had all night, because otherwise he was pretty sure he’d be stumbling around in the desert for the rest of his short, thirsty life. He took a drink out of his canteen to dismiss the sudden image of his desiccated body crawling through an endless expanse of nothing but rocks and more rocks. His stomach rebelled slightly, but the water stayed down; although if the hallucinations began again any time soon, it wouldn’t be long before it spilled onto the sand instead.
Rodney stumbled along, hurrying through the dark. It had started out as such a good day.
The village on PX5-398 had been, for once, everything Teyla promised it would be, without any surprise underground bunkers, weird religious rituals, or civil wars. Teyla had visited the village as a child with her people, and Ethnei, the leader of the village council, greeted her like an old friend, inviting her and the rest of the team to the large adobe-like building that served as a sort of town hall.
Even better, from Rodney’s point of view, was the presence of four energy signatures on the outskirts of the village. Rodney had been excited enough that he had kept his complaining about the planet’s indescribably hot climate to a minimum. None of the signatures were powerful enough to indicate a ZPM, but acquiring alien technology was their primary objective and surely more important than a standard village meet-and-greet, a fact which Sheppard and Teyla tragically refused to acknowledge. They did promise to ask the villagers about the energy signatures at the first available opportunity. ‘First available opportunity’ apparently translated into diplomat-speak as ‘after we’ve eaten the complimentary lunch and spent an eternity making polite chit-chat’.
Finally, Teyla asked about the signatures, and the smile dropped off Ethnei’s wrinkled face. She and the other councilors exchanged looks around the table, faces gone abruptly solemn and wary. Instead of answering, Ethnei rose from the table and gestured at Teyla to join her. With a glance at Sheppard, Teyla followed her into a corner of the adobe that had been partitioned off by a heavy curtain. Rodney and Sheppard had both edged forward on their woven stools, trying to catch some of the conversation, only to back away from the disapproving glares of the women still remaining at the table.
Ronon proceeded to ignore the whole thing, steadily eating the scraps of food still left on the clay platters that they had been given for lunch. Rodney slapped his hand away from his own shish-kabob-thing, and watched the curtain in trepidation.
“I’ll bet you three bags of coffee and a Twix bar that whatever’s producing those energy signatures has some kind of oh-so-important religious significance, only the worthy may enter, blah-blah-blah embarrassing ritual,” Rodney said under his breath.
Sheppard leaned back in his chair, grinning, and muttered, “That’s a sucker’s bet,” through his smiling teeth. “Look on the bright side, Rodney, even if there is a ritual, it can’t possibly be as bad as the one on the body-piercing planet.”
Ronon snorted around a mouthful of mushroom-and-bean pastry and reached across the table with one long arm to grab the communal soup bowl. Rodney shifted uncomfortably in his seat and resisted the urge to clutch at his nipple protectively, opting to glare at Sheppard instead.
Teyla reappeared from behind the curtain before Rodney could bring up the planet with the giant pigeon wrestling, which was perhaps for the best because Sheppard had been very scary and descriptive about exactly what he would do to anyone who mentioned PR4-365 ever again.
Teyla was still smiling, although she looked a little strained. Rodney braced himself.
She said, “The Kanoin are willing to let us examine their temples which are producing the energy signatures, but first - ”
Rodney groaned, Sheppard winced and even Ronon stopped eating long enough to stare up at Teyla plaintively.
Teyla narrowed her eyes at them and continued, “But first I must marry into Ethnei’s family.” She was already shaking her head and speaking again before any of them actually moved past wide eyes and gaping mouths into verbal protests.
“It is only a symbolic joining of two peoples, not any kind of true binding. The ceremony will take place tomorrow, after which we can return to Atlantis. When we return to the Kanoin after one full cycle of the moons, we will be considered family and will be given the opportunity to see the source of your energy signatures, Dr. McKay.”
Rodney nodded and started to relax, only for Teyla to continue with a certain dogged serenity that Rodney just knew she was faking. “There is, however, a simple ritual that we, as the visiting wedding party, must complete before the wedding.”
Rodney let his head hit the table with a thud, and Sheppard kicked him in the ankle, muttering, “You’re not really impressing the council ladies here, McKay. Quit it.”
Teyla was glaring at him when he raised his head. He sneered back, but manfully refrained from any comments about how much he had totally called this.
“All we must do is drink a wedding toast in the one of the village’s temples, and remain there for the rest of the night before the wedding. I am certain we will be able to complete it without much hardship,” Teyla said dryly.
Rodney smiled thinly back at her. Sheppard shrugged and said, “So, basically a bachelorette party, without the lingerie and male strippers? We can handle that.”
“We are so very doomed,” said Rodney.
“I love weddings,” said Ronon.
For a while it had seemed that his prediction had been overly pessimistic. They spent the rest of the day negotiating a trade agreement, which on Sheppard, Ronon and Rodney’s parts consisted of snacking and nodding supportively along with Teyla’s suggestions. Rodney managed to distract himself from total boredom by fantasizing about Teyla and her spouse-to-be after it was mentioned that Teyla’s fiancée was actually Ethnei’s daughter, a pretty, curly-haired woman in her thirties. Sheppard kept poking him every time his eyes got too glazed over, so he never really got that far into the good stuff, but it was better than listening to a three hour long haggle over squash vegetables and aspirin.
They walked up to the temple at dusk, the day’s heat still lingering in the air, dust from the path swirling up in small puffs around their boots. The temple turned out to be a tiny hut with a roof made of cracked red tiles that looked like it could collapse at any moment. The four of them just squeezed inside, and Rodney wondered what they would have done if their ‘wedding party’ had been bigger than four people. He lowered himself onto the woven mat on the floor, grimacing at the dead insect in the corner. He tried to get comfortable, leaning against the wall and stretching his legs out, but he already knew his back was going to be one tense mass of pain by the next morning.
His team settled themselves on the floor as well, and Teyla placed the small bowl of wine-coloured liquid that she had carefully carried up to the hut on the floor between them.
Sheppard leaned forward and picked it up. “Might as well get this part over with, I guess.” He took a long drink, and raised his eyebrows. “Huh. Not bad.”
He passed the bowl to Rodney, who took it reluctantly. “I can’t tell you how incredibly unhygienic this is. You didn’t detect any hint of citrus, did you?”
Ronon nudged his shoulder. “Just drink it, McKay.”
He took a gulp from the bowl. Sheppard was right, it wasn’t bad: cool and sweet, although it had a harshly bitter aftertaste. He figured it was only mildly alcoholic.
Ronon surprised him by raising the bowl up before he drank, saying seriously, “May the Ancestors bless your union.” Teyla nodded gravely in reply and finished off the remainder of the bowl. She placed the bowl next to her pack and sat back, her hands resting on her crossed legs.
There was silence for a moment, then Ronon asked, “So, now what?”
Sheppard reached into his pack and pulled out a pack of cards. Rodney shook his head and reached for his laptop while the other three started playing one of Sheppard’s insane card games. Rodney was 97.9% certain that Sheppard made up his games on the spot, as they tended to have rules like ‘food-throwing and kicking are allowed as distraction tactics, but not licking’ and ‘anyone who says the word “it” twice in the same sentence has to forfeit two of their cards to the shortest person in the game’.
Rodney had just noticed that one of the mysterious energy signatures was actually very close to their hut, less than five hundred feet away, and was calculating his chances of convincing Sheppard to wander off and maybe accidentally wander in to the area where the signature was coming from, when it all went to hell.
The hallucinations didn’t start gradually, sliding in like needles under skin the way they had on M1B-129, didn’t build up slowly from skewed bits of reality, memory and illusion. Rodney went from sitting uncomfortably in a shack surrounded by his teammates to being wrapped tight in a cocoon on a hive ship, a Wraith looming over him.
The Wraith’s hand slammed into his chest and he threw back his head in agony, mouth stretched wide and silent.
Then he was staring at Radek and Ford as blood poured from their ears and noses and they crumpled to the ground, trying to fight off terrifying shadows.
His parents were howling imprecations at each other, words he hadn’t understood as a seven-year old, and his mother flung a heavy marble clock that hit his father’s temple and his father was on the floor and there was blood everywhere.
The visions melded into each other seamlessly, shifting from scene to scene like the worst of Rodney’s nightmares, the ones he never talked about with Heightmeyer. He ran and fought and screamed and cried until the visions stopped as suddenly as they had started, and Rodney dropped to his knees and threw up all over the sandy ground. He had collapsed onto his side and scrabbled away from the mess he had made, half-sobbing in shock and fear.
“Fuck, fuck, oh god,” he had grated the words out between gasps, a steady stream of profanity and invocations, trying to calm himself with the familiar sound of his own voice.
It took him a while, that first time, to reorient himself, to remember that he was off-world and supposed to be in a hut performing a moronic ritual with his teammates. Instead, he was lying on his side in the middle of nowhere, with no hut or teammates anywhere in sight. He’d lost the life signs detector as well, and had felt a rush of cold panic before noticing the trail of footprints he had left behind him. He had dragged himself to his feet, ignoring his shaky legs, and began the walk back to the hut, wanting nothing more then to find his teammates and get the hell away from this shitty planet and back to Atlantis’ infirmary.
Since then, the horrible visions had returned twice, reducing him to a shivering, panicked wreck on the rocky desert soil, and his erratic running during the delusions was probably taking him further and further from the hut. Rodney had scratches on his face and hands that had most likely been caused by tearing through plants, bruises from hitting rocks and the ground, he was exhausted and head-achy and he would have given just about anything to be not quite so alone anymore. He kept walking.
When he finally saw the outline of the hut in the distance, below the curve of the hill he was edging down, Rodney nearly leapt for joy. Would have, were it not for the fact it would have caused him to lose his footing and end up as a bloody heap at the bottom of the rocks. Then he saw the figure standing outside the hut, watching his descent, and his heart jumped into a pounding rhythm until he recognized Teyla’s slender form. The relief that rushed through him was embarrassingly vast, but at the moment he couldn’t care less.
“Teyla,” he called out, and was surprised by how hoarse his voice sounded.
She walked forward to meet him. “Rodney,” she said, sounding just as desperately relieved as he felt. Once he got close enough, he could see how drawn and miserable she looked, but she grasped his shoulders and touched his forehead in the Athosian greeting before he could stammer out an attempt at sympathy.
Teyla led him into the hut, not releasing her hold on his arm. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her so shaken before, and it was throwing off his own equilibrium. The inside of the hut was dimly lit by the small flashlight on the ground, casting webs of shadows on the walls. Some of the sleeping bags had been spread out across the floor of the hut, and Teyla lowered herself to sit, crossing her legs and gesturing for him to do the same. It was a sudden gift to be out of the cold breeze, out of the desert and back somewhere at least vaguely familiar, with Teyla’s calming presence and concerned eyes so close by.
“Are you - all right?” Rodney asked. He wasn’t sure how to bring up the hallucinations.
Teyla met his eyes. There was more sorrow on her face then Rodney could deal with, and he looked away. He raised his eyes when he felt her soft touch on his sleeve.
“I am fine, Rodney. The visions were terrible, but- ”she hesitated, then continued, “But there was nothing in them that was not already inside of me.”
He nodded, not entirely sure he understood, but unwilling to discuss the content of the hallucinations in any depth.
“I wonder if it’s the drink that causing them, or maybe something to do with energy signatures, or even a combination of both.” He would have been pissed at the villagers who had sent them up into the hills to have some kind of half-assed ritual acid trip, but he was just too tired to work up any serious anger at the moment.
Teyla seemed equally worn out; she shook her head with weary disinterest. “I am not sure. The Kanoin certainly did not say that the ritual would be so - difficult. I do not believe that whatever we are experiencing is the ritual’s intended form.”
Rodney shrugged and leaned against the wall of the hut. He closed his eyes and was already half-asleep when Teyla spoke again.
“I have found that meditation appears to mitigate the effects of the visions, and allows me to retain a greater awareness of what is real,” she said quietly. In most circumstances, Rodney wouldn’t have hesitated to explain that not only was meditation a bunch of New Age mystical crap, he was also pretty sure he would be terrible at it. Aching and exhausted in a cold hut, staring at the tiny flashlight that was the only thing keeping them from sitting in pitch blackness, he only nodded.
He didn’t open his eyes, but he tried to relax his body and drive away the images that he had been reliving in technicolour and surround sound. When that failed, he began running through equations in his head, casting his mind back to various problems that awaited him in his lab on Atlantis.
The hallucinations arrived again just as he finally achieved some form of relaxation, breathing slowly in tandem with Teyla and focusing on jumper modifications rather than the chittering noise the Replicators had made as they flowed over Elizabeth’s prone body, ripping it to pieces. Unexpectedly, Teyla was right about the hallucinations losing some of their force; of course, whatever was causing them could simply be wearing off, it wasn’t necessarily because of his reluctant attempt at meditation. In either case, Rodney didn’t feel quite so immersed in the scenes that splashed vibrantly across his mind, and he remained distantly aware the entire time of the ground beneath him and the hard clutch of Teyla’s hand on his own.
She didn’t let go of his hand once the visions had ended, allowed him to clasp her small, cool hand with his most likely sweaty fingers, and Rodney felt a rush of warmth for her that lasted until a halting shout from outside made them both jump.
They stared at each other for a moment, then Rodney blurted out, “That was Sheppard,” and Teyla was on her feet and out the door while Rodney was still trying to force his shaky limbs to cooperate. He followed her out into the night, suppressing his groans over his body’s stiffness. Teyla was a darting silhouette against the pale landscape, and Rodney stumbled after her and prayed that he wouldn’t run into a giant hole or a rattlesnake or something.
They found Sheppard near the edge of a steep ravine. By the time Rodney reached them, out of breath and trying to hide it, Teyla was already helping Sheppard to his feet.
“Rodney, hurry please, he has injured his ankle,” she said breathlessly, already sagging from the effort of supporting Sheppard’s much taller and heavier body.
Rodney quickly moved around to Sheppard’s other side and got his left arm around his shoulder, taking most of Sheppard’s weight. Teyla sent him a brief look of gratitude and Sheppard rasped, “Hey, McKay. Long time, no see.”
Rodney rolled his eyes, but before he could make any comments about the fact that Sheppard was definitely overplaying the ‘cool guy’ role at this point, a sideways glance got him a good look at Sheppard’s face.
“You look like crap, Colonel. How on earth did you get a black eye?” Sheppard was white and grim from pain and the bruise already stood out clearly against his skin.
Sheppard shrugged as much as he could with his arms slung over their shoulders.
“Not sure. Could be from a rock, or a tree, or hell, maybe one of you guys when we all freaked out and ditched the hut. Are we heading back there any time soon, by the way? I could really use some water.” Sheppard shifted his leg and winced. “And possibly some aspirin.”
They set off back towards the hut at a slow, uneven pace; Sheppard’s limp made every step jolting and awkward, and Rodney and Teyla’s disparity in height didn’t help matters. Rodney kept up a constant stream of mainly one-sided conversation revolving around the how and why of their hallucinations, the most likely theory being that the energy signatures that they were picking up were coming from Ancient devices that had been activated by Sheppard’s presence and were affecting their mental processes. Teyla made absent affirmative noises and Sheppard just grunted. However, they reached the hut without anyone falling down a gully or being attacked by giant tarantulas, so Rodney decided to count it as a win.
He collapsed on top of one of the sleeping bags inside the hut as Teyla wrapped Sheppard’s ankle and gave him an ice pack. Rodney managed to rouse himself long enough to dig a bottle of aspirin out his pack and hand it along with a canteen to Sheppard, who took it with a nod of thanks.
Rodney fell back onto the sleeping bag, unable to face making another attempt at meditation. If the hallucinations came back, Teyla and Sheppard would probably be able to keep him grounded anyway, and being asleep was nearly the same as being very relaxed and Zen, right? He drifted off to the soft sounds of his teammates’ voices as they discussed whether or not Teyla should go searching for Ronon.
He woke up when Ronon staggered into the hut as the sky was beginning to lighten outside. Rodney was still achy and bone-weary, but now he was also warm and a little hungry instead of nauseous. He was laying on his stomach half in and half out of a sleeping bag, hand curled around something warm that turned out to be Teyla’s wrist. He could see her hair and shoulders and hear the soft sighing noises that meant she was asleep. When he turned his head to see Ronon come in, he confirmed that the solid press against his shoulder was Sheppard, who sat propped against the wall of the hut. He was pale and almost entirely engulfed by a sleeping bag, but still kept watch through drooping eyes.
Ronon stood in the doorway to the hut, staring at them. Although his expression was nearly blank, Rodney thought that he saw something behind it that was - yearning, perhaps. He lifted the hand that wasn’t holding Teyla’s wrist to give a lazy wave, and mumbled something that was meant to be welcoming.
Sheppard, thankfully, was a little more coherent. “Ronon. You okay, buddy? Come sit down.”
Ronon stared for a few seconds, like he wasn’t certain that he had found the right hut. Then he walked in and slumped onto the sleeping bag next to Teyla’s, turning his flat stare to the ceiling.
Sheppard asked again, “You okay?”
The silence stretched out, and Rodney was mostly asleep again and thought Ronon wasn’t going to answer. He blinked, startled, when Ronon said softly, “Nightmares.”
“Yeah,” said Sheppard, “yeah, us too.” He hesitated, then said, “Rest, if you can. We’ve got a wedding to attend tomorrow.”
Rodney buried his head further into the sleeping bag. He had completely forgotten about the wedding.
“That’s going to be fun,” said Ronon, without inflection.
Sheppard sounded like he’d be amused if he wasn’t about to pass out. “It can’t be worse than my wedding.”
Curiosity immediately erupted in Rodney’s sleep-deprived brain, and when almost a minute had gone by in silence, he couldn’t restrain himself.
“Why? What happened at your wedding?”
He could hear Sheppard grinning when he replied, “I didn’t go.”
“Please, let us all sleep for a time,” said Teyla in a croaky, muffled voice. They quieted down, though Rodney made a mental noted to start poking at Sheppard about his supposed wedding at the soonest possible moment. He closed his eyes again and stroked the smooth skin on Teyla’s wrist, listened to Ronon’s slow breathing. They were here, and safe, and together, and in the morning they would go to Teyla’s wedding.
Rodney slept.
##