A/N: A huge, massive, immeasurable thanks to Everybetty for the beta, and Kristen999 for pointing her my way. No words can describe how appreciated the help was.
Siren
by
Stealth Dragon
Rating: T to play it safe, but could be K
Disclaimer: Don't own Stargate: Atlantis. no way, no how.
Summary: They need only to survive the night. Sheppard/Ronon friendship.
SGA
Once upon a time, there was this guy named Odysseus - a soldier, sailor... you would have liked him, Ronon. And all this guy wanted to do was get home, right? But the gods, they weren't happy with him, so they gave him a whole lot of grief along the way. Storms and monsters and crap like that, picking off his crew: things like one-eyed giants and giant squids like the one in that pirate movie. Oh, and there were these creatures - women with bird bodies and irresistible voices that would get sailors so smitten they'd crash on the rocks. So Odysseus had his men stuff their ears with waxed cotton, and tie him to the mast to keep him from steering the boat to their doom when the bird-women sang. Smart guy, that Odysseus.
Snow hammered like a thousand needles against Ronon's face when he risked lifting it to get his bearings. It wasn't a blizzard, not yet. He was still able to see the trees, black against the blue twilight. This was the herald of the storm, the war cry of the monster before it came. There was still time to find shelter, and caution be damned. He sniffed the air, catching the tang of smoke stronger than it had been when the world was still gray and white.
Just a few more feet, then it would all be a matter of pleading for shelter or demanding it through force. He adjusted his burden more comfortably across his shoulders. Sheppard continued to try and take most of his own weight, but the frozen earth beneath the knee-high snow wouldn't let him.
Their legs plowed runnels through fine powder that crept into the nooks and crannies of their boots, soaking through the heavier cloth of their pants. He kept at an angle to block as much of the wind as he could. That wind shoved up against him like a stubborn pack-animal, cutting exposed skin with cold and frozen shards. He didn't want to think about what this was doing to Sheppard. Couldn't think about it. Couldn't think about the blood freezing on skin that would lead to frostbite. Couldn't think about blood loss, hunger, infection...
Neither could he stop himself from thinking. Sheppard had stopped trembling, and Ronon distinctly recalled Beckett, long before he had died, having said something about that being a bad sign. No shivering, but there was an increase in Sheppard's wheezing breaths, audible over the wind. Shelter would be obtained, Ronon didn't care how. Consequences had no place here, except should the smell of smoke be nothing more than an illusion.
He risked another glance through the thin sheet of snow, and gasped, his knees nearly buckling, at the distant flicker of yellow light floating in the darkness. Grinning for the cold to bite his teeth, he trudged on, dragging Sheppard who'd finally given up trying to walk on his own. The wind shoved harder against them as though in protest that they were about to end up where it could not touch them. It snatched Ronon's breath away, shoving cold that burned into his lungs. He coughed and forced as much of his back to the wind as he could so that Sheppard wouldn't suffer the same.
The light bobbed closer, fluttering like a cluster of panicking star-bugs. It was all Ronon could see through the snow and dark, but it was all he needed. His legs shook with each step, so numb he was amazed he could still move them, so weak he thought for sure the next step would bring him down. His right knee tried to give, but his left kept him up. He could no longer feel his fingers that had frozen, curled around Sheppard's wrist and a wad of his jacket.
Not much farther.
The wind beat on him with its needles and shards that went for his eyes to blind him. Ronon gave up on trying to see. He had a direction, was close enough to stay on that path, so turned his face away. The wind picked through his hair to scour the skin of his head and neck. He snarled against it.
Then ran into something rough and solid to rebound backward in a stumble. He squinted out of the corner of his eye at the patchwork of wood planks forming a door in the sheered wall of a small hill. Sheppard would have called it a hobbit-hole, but bigger, had he been aware enough to notice. Amber light poured like pale honey from a dirty round window next to the door. Ronon would have embraced that window if it were possible.
He kicked at the door instead. "Hey! Anyone in there? Hello! I don't mean you any harm. There's a storm and my friend is injured. We need shelter, just for the night, and we'll be gone by morning."
As expected, though still a disappointment, there was no answer. Ronon kicked the door hard enough for it to rattle on its shoddy hinges. "Open up! I will not let my friend die in this. If you don't open this door, I swear by the blood of the Ancestors I will knock it down and take shelter by force! Do you hear me? Open this damn door now!" He kicked it again. "Open this door!"
There followed several clicks. The door flew inwards to firelight, warmth and a woman with skin the color of tanned leather and hair more knotted and far longer than Ronon's own. She could have been any age, from barely thirty to skirting fifty, dressed in layers of animal hides and scraps of cloth burying a skinny frame. Brown eyes verging on black regarded the two with ample annoyance and no fear. Her gaze lingered long on Sheppard, then flicked to Ronon and narrowed.
"You could do with a lesson in patience," she said in a voice not unlike the branches creaking overhead. With a sniff and a backward jerk of her head, she beckoned them in.
The "hobbit-hole" had a ceiling high enough for Ronon to stand straight, and was much larger than the deceptive outside would suggest. In the right corner was a round clay fireplace, blazing high and bright, and next to it a square table barely standing on rickety legs. There were shelves carved into the wall holding pots of more clay, pans of metal, sacks, sticks, roots, animal bones and dried plants. More dried plants and animal bones hung from the ceiling. On both the left and right of the single room were two beds, one rumpled, the other neatly made.
Ronon looked from the made bed to the woman now unmaking it. "You're a healer."
She said nothing as she turned the blankets and skins down to expose the straw pallet. Ronon didn't need any cues. He dragged Sheppard to it and lowered him onto the edge. As he stripped Sheppard of his vest and jacket, the woman shuffled over to the fire, taking a kettle from a shelf to fill with water from a bucket by the hearth.
"If you wish me to help him," she said, pushing the kettle toward the fire using a poker, "that will cost you."
Ronon slipped Sheppard's arms free of his jacket. "You take weapons? Knives?"
"Depends on their quality."
Ronon held Sheppard upright one handed as he fished into the hidden pocket of his coat. He pulled out the curved dagger with the leather hilt and tossed it to the woman. The woman snatched it up like an animal grabbing food and ran her thumb along it's its edge. Her lips pulled back in a feral grimace of a smile that flashed blackened teeth.
"So?" Ronon asked.
The woman tucked the knife away within the skin layers. "I'll do my best, but it's my policy not to make promises. Some ills cannot be undone."
Before removing Sheppard's shirt, Ronon fingered the dried blood crusting the edges of the tear. Slowly, cautiously, he picked the fabric away from the skin around the wound. The blood didn't feel cold, neither was it fresh. The wound was long, the knife having glanced over the three bottom ribs to stop just above the hip, but it wasn't deep. The skin around it, however, was hot.
A hard tug on a particularly stubborn spot roused Sheppard with a shudder, hiss and a groggy, "What the hell?"
"Found shelter," Ronon said. With the gash clear, he was able to pull Sheppard's shirt off without causing any real pain or damage. The injured man was like a rag doll, all loose limbs that flopped without even trying to resist as the shirt slid away. Once gone, Ronon was able to finally lay him out on the bed, arranging limbs onto the pallet, then remove his boots. Sheppard didn't even have strength enough to lift his head and take in his surroundings. His eyes rolled while his eyelids fought to stay open.
"Look like... nice digs," he gasped. "How'd you... score 'em?"
Ronon grinned, covering Sheppard to the waist with the blankets. "I followed my nose, then headed toward the light."
Sheppard closed his eyes with a groan. "We've so... corrupted you." Then he coughed, liquid and harsh.
Ronon gripped his shoulder. "Lay still and try not to talk. That wound needs cleaning."
A breathy sigh deflated Sheppard's chest, ending in another cough. "It's gonna hurt?"
"Like a bitch."
"Really, really corrupted you."
The shriek of the kettle made Sheppard flinch. Ronon patted his shoulder reassuringly, like calming a startled beast. The woman shuffled over with the kettle, a bowl, and cloths draped over her arm. Shouldering her way between Ronon and Sheppard, she sat with crossed legs beside the bed, pouring heated water into the bowl half-filled with a mud-colored powder.
"This will not be pleasant," she said. She soaked one of the rags, then attacked the wound.
Sheppard's body tensed and recoiled as the woman gouged and dug through the scabbing to renew the bleeding. Ronon moved around her, kneeling beside Sheppard to hold him down by the shoulders, ignoring the twisted expression of pain and water squeezing through the colonel's eyelids.
"It's got to be done, Sheppard," he said. Sheppard's head twitched in a nod. It was basic battlefield triage; you couldn't just clean the surface of the wound, you had to go in deep, debride the dead tissue and get the body to force out any toxins through bleeding.
Sheppard's fingers curled like bony claws into the pallet until gathering a fistful of sheet and straw to grip. He squirmed, shook, panted. Muscles hardened until they quivered beneath Ronon's hands, and sweat lubricated the pale skin. Ronon leaned all his weight onto his arms just to keep his hands from slipping and Sheppard from wriggling away.
"Almost done," the woman said, though there was no reassurance in it. She dipped the rag into the bowl, and wrung stained water from it. Ronon stared at the blood pooled on the edges of the gash, watched as it spilled over in drops small as drizzle, drawing thread-thin bars of brilliant red against white, like a cage. The gash was almost perfect, almost straight where the knife had found the gap in the vest. He recalled Sheppard having grunted more than cried out. During that peak of adrenaline surge, pain had had barely any existence. Sheppard had found the blood long before finally feeling the pain.
The healer dropped the sodden rag into the water with a slopping splash that stained the rock floor. "I have cleaned as best as I can," she said, sounding unapologetic about it. She pushed herself up with an easy agility that Ronon hadn't thought possible with her shuffling gait and body buried under so many skins. As she bustled and busied around the shelves and at the table, concocting the Ancestors' only knew what, Ronon rubbed Sheppard's slick shoulder. The pilot wouldn't stop shaking, panting, and tears had mixed with the sweat on his face.
It had to be done, Ronon wanted to say. He decided not to. It was too redundant to be spoken out loud, for one. For another... he couldn't help wonder if there might have been a better way, some root or tea to dull the pain. Sheppard could have gone into shock.
Funny the things Ronon had become more aware of since joining up with the 'Lanteans. He'd always known about things like shock and wound debridement. The military had taught him the basics, and Melena had told him the details (like keeping a victim of shock warm and elevating their feet.) Known, just never really thought about. You took what you could get when you had nothing, and in the heat of battle that meant slapping a bandage on a spurting wound to drag the wounded to someone who knew how to heal. Not much time to take into consideration shock or internal bleeding. No point in thinking about well-being when it was all about life or death. It was a state of mind that had a way of translating over to moments when the battle had quieted, allowing time and room to think. Even then, it was all about keeping them alive long enough for someone else to do the real work.
No time to pay attention to what the wounded were going through. It was the wrong kind of attachment to form. Loyalty was important. Save a life when you could, but always be willing and ready to let go when you had no other choice.
Ronon pressed his fingers into Sheppard's neck against the skittering thrum of the pulse, then moved his hand to the colonel's chest to feel his heart and labored breathing. Sheppard's skin was too warm, which explained why he hadn't fallen to hypothermia.
The old woman returned with strips of cloth and another bowl. She dropped to the floor and, using her fingers, scooped fat amounts of a gray paste onto two fingers that she packed into the wound. Sheppard's body stiffened, muscles bunching and twitching. Ronon lightly patted his chest.
"Easy, Sheppard, easy. She's almost done." He tilted his chin toward the paste. "What is that?"
"Beekey mash," she said. "It will help draw out poisons and keep the wound sealed and cleaned. Lift him."
Placing his hands beneath Sheppard's slippery shoulders, Ronon pushed his CO upright enough for the woman to place some sort of brown moss over the wound, then held it in place by wrapping cloth-strips around Sheppard's middle. When done, Ronon lowered Sheppard back to prone for the woman to cover him to just below his chest with the blanket and skins. After that, she thrust a wet rag and a wooden cup of water at Ronon.
"Wipe him down, keep him cool. Don't re-wet the cloth with the bucket water. Fill a bowl. This is your part. I've done all I can." With that said, she rose and shuffled to the back of the room where she busied herself crushing dried plants into fine powder.
Ronon lifted Sheppard's head enough to drink.
"She needs to work," Sheppard said between sips, "on her bedside manner."
Ronon grinned. He lowered Sheppard's head back to the pallet and proceeded to wipe the sweat from the man's head, neck and chest. "Be happy she fixed you up. How's the pain?"
"Throbbing," Sheppard rasped. "Manageable." He coughed wetly. "Right now... I'm just happy to be... to be warm. Be happier if... if we were home, though."
Ronon looked toward the rattling window obscured by frost. In the silence above the wheeze of Sheppard's breathing and crackle of crushed plants was the shrill whistle and low moan of a ceaseless wind, and the clatter of ice-crystals against glass.
"How long do the storms usually last?" Ronon asked the woman.
Stone grated against stone when the plant finally became powder. "Days, sometimes. An entire night. They live for as long as they wish to live."
Ronon closed his eyes, releasing his frustration on a slow breath. "You could have just said 'I don't know'."
The hollow grating stopped. "And where is the fun in that?" Ronon could hear her insufferable smile in her voice.
Shaking his head, he opted for dropping the matter by focusing back on Sheppard. The pilot's eyes were closed and his wet breathing even, albeit shallow. Ronon watched the chest's motions; the way it rose only to stop as though hitting a barrier and deflate in a stutter; the way the flesh sank between the ribs on the attempted deeper breaths that ended in a cough; the blackness of the sweat-plastered hair like smears of charcoal. Ronon thought he could almost detect minor movement in a patch of skin over the heart.
In, out. In, out. In, out. Ronon matched his own breathing to it, and felt like he was suffocating. But he was distracted from it when his stomach growled a reminder of how long it had been since they'd eaten. Three and a half days, he recalled, since their last piece of Power Bar. Five days since being separated and dragged through the gate, and four since escaping the hostiles who had done the separating. A day since running into that second group that had injured Sheppard. The need to run hadn't allowed time to properly clean and bind the wound.
"Got any food?" Ronon asked.
"For you," said the woman, "there is meat. For your friend I will cook a broth. Both will cost you extra."
Ronon didn't even think about it when he pulled the knife hidden in his right sleeve and tossed it to her.
The wind's whistle climbed into a howl. It battered against the door, the window, chafing them with a wall of ice and snow. Slivers of it snaked through the gaps and cracks to brush the side of Ronon's face like both a kiss and a bite. If he listened hard enough, he could almost hear words.
A hard thump on his shoulder jolted him. He looked up at the woman holding a leg of meat to him. Taking it with a nod of thanks, Ronon tore into it with animal abandon. He was half-way through it when the woman nudged him again, holding a steaming cup within reach. He took it and set it down to cool as he finished, then roused Sheppard enough to take a few swallows.
Sheppard grimaced. "Tastes like... minestrone. Hate minestrone." He drank more, anyways, mostly because Ronon wouldn't let him stop. Only when Sheppard turned his head away, pleading no more or he would puke, did Ronon set the bowl aside.
Sheppard slipped easily back to sleep, and Ronon continued wiping him down. It took a moment for him to realize that he was moving to the rhythm of the old woman's grinding.
The wind's wail increased in pitch, its onslaught strengthening from rattling the window to shuddering the door. Ronon found it... comforting. The wind outside, them warm and dry and safe from it inside. The heat of the cracking fire had finally soaked to the marrow of his bones, and he felt it like a weight pushing against him. It was the consequence of so much exertion giving him no choice but to lie down or fall down. So he curled up on the floor with his head resting above Sheppard's head on the pallet. Still he wiped - head, neck and chest, slower and slower. His body felt both heavy and light, pressed down by warmth and weightlessly numb, and he vaguely wondered if he had been drugged.
"Sleep, you oaf," the old woman snapped. "You said you would be gone by morning and I have every intention of holding you to that promise. I don't like wasting my stores on freeloaders."
Ronon's eyes slid shut against the old instincts that always resurfaced when he was trapped on another world. Instincts that told him to stay awake, or at least aware enough to awaken when something in his surroundings changed. Seven years of caution wouldn't be forgotten, and no amount of exhaustion would blind him to anything the old woman might try.
Even if they were warm and dry and safe as they were possibly going to get.
------------------------------------------
Melena stood tall, straight, defiant and terrified. In the haloing glow from the window behind her, she was the spirit of Mercy, holding her ground against agony and death. There was blood on her hands, dirt on her face, and yet never had she been more beautiful.
White light flashed and the window exploded in a shower of crystal. Where there should have been flames, there was snow and ice swallowing Melena until there was nothing left of her to see. Ronon could feel the cold brush against his face and hands.
I can't leave them.
An animal howl of fury and agony tore from Ronon's throat, shaking the floors and windows and his own flesh. He dove head first into the ice-cloud and ice-shards that sliced his skin, but he couldn't find her...
I'm here, Ronon. I'm here.
The wheeze of labored breathing rose above the wail of the storm.
Ronon snapped his head up, white light and snow replaced by shadows and fluttering amber light. It took a few blinks and passing his hand over his face for him to realize the wheezing was still louder than the wailing. His eyes dropped to Sheppard. The man's face was turned part-way to the side, eyes squeezed shut and lips parted to pull in more air. All that struggling just for oxygen tightened Ronon's own chest. He stared at Sheppard's heaving flanks and the sweat so thick it had pooled in the hollow of the colonel's throat. He didn't need to place his hand on Sheppard's brow to feel how bad the fever had gotten, but did it anyways, then yanked back the blankets and skins for the cooler air to get to his sick body.
Outside, the wind seemed to throw itself against the door. Whistling and howling, Ronon still swore he could hear voices, hundreds of them all talking at once, but they were drowned out by Sheppard's breathing.
"Lift him."
Ronon jumped at the clarity of the words, and flinched at the woman suddenly next to him. He hadn't heard her come, or even so much as sensed her proximity, and that both annoyed and unsettled him.
Still, he complied, shifting to be behind Sheppard so he could lift him up by the shoulders, just enough for the old woman to get the bowl of steaming water beneath the colonel's mouth and nose. The sickly spiced scent of herbs crawled up Ronon's nose and down his throat. It had a bite to it, one that felt good to breathe in, like taking a drink after being thirsty for too long.
Sheppard's body suddenly bucked when a vicious coughing jag exploded from him. The coughing pushed more air from his lungs than he was able to suck back in. Ronon could feel the muscles contract so tight they pulled the colonel's arms up and the fingers made claws trying to grasp at air.
"The liquid is breaking up," the woman explained above the agonized choking. "His breathing sack is making room. Pound his back, it will help clear the way."
Sliding one arm across Sheppard's chest, he leaned the sick man forward to make space to slam the flat of his hand into his spine with enough force to bruise but not to damage. The repetitive thumps sounded hollow, and Sheppard's body jolted hard beneath the blows.
It had to be done. Of course it had to be done. That didn't stop Ronon from gritting his teeth against the overwhelming desire to stop. Each hit darkened the ever-growing red on skin that would soon turn black and blue. Hands that should have been reassuring Sheppard, comforting him, helping him, were bruising him. Ronon was causing Sheppard, his friend, pain.
He'd once told McKay that he didn't let the things he couldn't change bother him. He didn't forget the past, he simply did not dwell on it. But he did mourn, and he did regret, always in the moment when it mattered the most and counted for something.
He was doing what he had to do, and hating it out of respect for the one who didn't deserve this.
One more blow, harder than the last and painful for both of them, caused something to slap audibly against the back of Sheppard's throat. Following it was the most beautiful sound Ronon had ever heard - the long, wet rasp of Sheppard's desperate inhale.
Air Ronon hadn't realized he'd been holding in rushed from his chest, and he rested his forehead against the peak of Sheppard's backbone. The relief wanted to pull him down, and it took everything he had not to collapse in a heap on top of Sheppard.
"That is better," the old woman soothed. Ronon lifted his head to see her pressing a gnarled hand against the side of Sheppard's face.
Ronon gave the colonel's shoulder a light squeeze, then his back a careful rub. Hands that could bruise and break necks weren't without the ability to show gentle kindness. Melena had taught him, when he would volunteer to help her at the hospital, the way to lift a frail patient or cradle a small child in his large arms. She also taught him in the way she would hold his hand, touch his face, lean up against him and embrace him.
Melena's hands could make anyone feel fragile and important. Ronon supposed it the touch of all healers, because Beckett's had been the same, and Keller's. He envied that of them, sometimes, especially when it was needed most. In Ronon's large hands, Sheppard seemed vulnerable and small. The pilot was shaking badly, and with his skin so wet it made Ronon's hold on him precarious.
Time passed, stretching into hours though it might only have been minutes, when the old woman allowed Ronon to lay Sheppard back down.
"I will heat more water," she said. She rose with that same enviable grace and moved in her contradictory shuffle to the fire. "I told you I make no promises about recovery."
Ronon covered Sheppard just to his waist. The bowl of water and wiping rag were still next to the pallet, so Ronon continued to cool Sheppard down. "I know." He listened to the sounds of the woman pouring more water to boil.
"I am not sure if he will last the night," she said.
Ronon wiped the puddle of sweat from Sheppard's throat. "He's survived worse. He's strong."
That earned him a derisive snort from the crone. "That is what they all say, just before their strong one dies."
Ronon saw no reason to reply to that. She didn't know Sheppard - what he'd been through, what he'd survived - and he wasn't going to waste his breath telling her about mutations and being fed on more than any human should be. It was not any of her business, and she probably wouldn't understand.
Sheppard's breathing had quieted from a wheeze to a whistle; Ronon could now hear the voices within the wind. Whispers, dozens of them, like people talking behind their hands, telling lies and spreading rumors because they could. In the days of Ronon's schooling, when at the age where the body grows in ungainly spurts, the children would congregate in groups to chatter like birds while looking his way. But they never confronted him directly. They thought he would kill them if they did. He was a giant, after all, and all the giants went on to become soldiers that killed.
"Are there people who live nearby?" Ronon finally asked for curiosity's sake. He highly doubted anyone would be stupid enough to stand outside in this storm just to whisper rumors through the door.
The woman shuffled back, placing two bowls on either side of the pallet, then shuffled away again. "No, not for miles." She returned with two more bowls, setting them next to the first bowls. "Do not listen to the wind. It weaves only lies. There is no one out there that matters."
Ronon looked from the woman to the window. There was nothing to see except endless black, like space without any stars. Overcome by an irrational fear of being sucked into that void, he looked away, focusing back on Sheppard.
-----------------------------------------
Melena's laugh was airy and light when she spun on the tip of her toes to flit off in a flutter of white and pale blue, like a bird taking to the skies. She ran as though moving through water, gown flowing, hair waving, bare feet barely touching the soft dark grass of the meadow. Ronon gave chase with all the speed he could manage without ever catching up. Melena tossed more laughter over her pale shoulder. She always did love child-like games.
Snow swirled from someplace Ronon could not see, thickening around Melena until he could barely see her.
"Come find me, Ronon!" she called before him.
I'm here, Ronon. I'm here, she breathed from behind, but Ronon continued to chase even with nothing left of Melena to see.
Something moaned, low and threatening.
Ronon bolted upright with blaster drawn pointed straight at the shivering door, his chest heaving. Sweat tickled from his hairline to his neck, and down his spine creating an itch he didn't dare move to scratch. All focus and energy was pushed to his straining ears.
He heard only the wail of the wind, the snap of the fire, and the return of Sheppard's wheezing.
Then the door slammed against the bolts and hinges keeping it shut with a force that was only possible with a physical blow from a solid body. Ronon surged to his feet, lighter than air, riding an infusion of adrenaline being shoved through his body by his hammering heart. He waited, counting heartbeats, counting rapid breaths, for the second blow that would splinter the door.
Thirty heartbeats later, and nothing.
"I told you," croaked the woman's voice, "there is nothing out there that matters."
Ronon angled his head just enough to have both her and the door in his peripheral view. She was in her bed, hunched like a flightless beena bird, fat with feathers, huddling in her nest. She was sewing something - clothes or a blanket - using thick thread that Ronon would recognize anywhere as animal gut. And she was completely indifferent.
It made Ronon's lips part in a vicious smile, because old and trusted instincts screamed danger, yet this woman had survived a hell of a lot longer than him.
"But there's something out there," he challenged.
She tugged hard at a knot until the thread straightened. "Nothing that matters."
A solid thud that was more like a crash against the thick wood yanked Ronon's attention back to the barrier. "You're gonna tell me it's just the wind?"
The woman said nothing.
The wind's noise was high, a collection of screams that barely altered in pitch, a thousand claws raking stone, over and over and over. And beneath it was the excited chatter of voices.
Ronon pulled his lip back away from his teeth. "That's not the wind. The wind doesn't sound like that."
"The wind sounds like whatever it wants to. You hear what it wants you to hear. It is your own fault if you listen to it."
If the window shook any harder, it was going to shatter, and one more blow to the door would bring it down. Ronon shook his head. The old woman wasn't a survivor, she was crazy. There was something out there, something trying to get in, and it was going to kill them all if he didn't kill it first.
The door thundered again when a solid mass struck it. Decided, Ronon took one step toward the barrier.
"Go, and you may never come back," said the old woman.
Ronon paused. "I have to."
The woman made a sound like a dry, hiccuping wheeze. Ronon realized she was laughing.
"Please. None of us have to do anything. I did not have to let you in, and you do not have to leave your friend."
Ronon shook his head, his hair tapping his jaw. "I'm doing this for my friend. If that thing comes in, it will try to kill him first. Predators always go for the weakest." And he took another step.
"If you leave, your friend will die."
That brought Ronon to a halt. He spun around to aim his blaster at the old woman. "That a threat?"
The woman, unflappable in the knowledge and conditioning only years could bring, continued her sewing as though unaware of what was pointed her way. "Of course not. You are being stupid."
Then she looked up at him with eyes dark and hard as obsidian stone, and once again Ronon was overcome by the inexplicable fear of being sucked into a fathomless void. This time, however, there was no pulling away no matter how much his mind screamed.
"Even the strong need strength," she said, daring him to deny the truth of it. "If you step out that door, if you are not here when your friend awakes, what do you think that will do to him? The mind is not stable when the body is so heated. What will his delusion be when his friend is not here to offer him assurances?"
Ronon managed to break the hold so that he could turn his head and put Sheppard within his sights. The colonel's labored breathing was louder, his chest rising high in an attempt to take in as much air as it could.
"The storms are like beasts," the old woman went on. "Beasts that hunt. Beasts that go mad over the smell of blood. The storm has scented the sickness of your friend, so it is your friend the storm wants. If you leave, your friend will be unprotected. The storm will take him."
Nonsense, that's what McKay would call it. Stupid, mindless, backward superstitious nonsense. Every world had their beliefs and their tales, mostly wraith dominated. This was the first story Ronon had heard that didn't involve the wraith whatsoever, but it was still nonsense.
Sheppard stirred, rolling his head from side to side, making low croaking sounds as though in pain yet too weak to even so much as whimper. Ronon shoved his weapon into its holster and moved back to his friend's side, taking up the rag to wipe away more sweat.
"Sheppard?" he prodded. If Sheppard was waking, it meant the sickness didn't have a solid hold on him just yet.
Bruised eyelids twitched and trembled, then pulled apart into hair-thin slits. "Rn'n?"
Ronon dropped the rag in order to grip Sheppard's over-heated shoulder. "I'm here, Sheppard."
The pale brow tightened, forming furrows across the skin. "Ro - non? Where're... where're they? Where... M'kay, T'la? Where...?"
"Home," Ronon interjected. "They're home." He didn't think it a lie. Ronon and Sheppard had given McKay plenty of cover and time to get back to the gate with a wounded Teyla. The rest had been a blur of being stunned on a desert world and waking to being transported by wagon through a forest. Since McKay and Teyla hadn't been there, Ronon felt it safe to assume - no, he had to assume or drive himself mad otherwise - that they had made it home.
Sheppard's limp hand flopped over the pallet as though searching for something. That something ended up being Ronon's shirt when the fingers curled the fabric into the palm. The hold was weak, and the limb shook trying to hang on.
"Don't... don't go... anywhere. 'Kay? Gotta stick together. Watch... each other's... backs. Gotta... too dangerous. Can't lose... anymore. I can't... can't..." Then his eyes blinked shut and his hand dropped lifelessly onto the bedding. His chest, thankfully, continued to rise and fall.
Ronon tightened his grip on Sheppard's shoulder. "Not going anywhere." He soaked and wrung the rag, and slid it across the sweat-glittering brow.
"Hold on to him as tightly as you dare," said the old woman. "It never makes a difference."
The dry rustle of cloth and skins alerted Ronon to her movements. This time, he wasn't caught off guard. Neither did he risk looking at her.
"I must change the bandaging, clean the wound."
Swallowing, Ronon nodded. As the woman prepared what was needed, Ronon prepared Sheppard by lifting the smaller man up to rest against his chest.
Sheppard remained still as the bandages and moss were removed to expose a swollen red wound. When the cleaning proceeded, Sheppard stirred, squirming. Moans vibrated his chest, rising higher into whimpers. Whimpers became words- angry, begging and slurred.
"Nnnnn... nooo... nnnno."
The woman dug harder into the gash, scraping away ointment and scabbing until the wound bled fresh. When Sheppard tried to pull away and Ronon held him in place, he arched his back instead, gasping for breath that was never enough. It didn't seem possible for the muscles to lock so tight without bones snapping.
Ronon dropped his forehead to rest against the top of Sheppard's scalp. "Shhhh. Easy, Sheppard. We're helping you. It's all right, you're all right..." By the Ancestors, he hated this.
He'd once said to Teyla, or maybe it had been Elizabeth, that he wasn't good at sitting around and doing nothing. If McKay's phobia was tight spaces, Teyla's the loss of her people, and Sheppard's something called "clowns," then Ronon supposed his was helplessness. He didn't know how to not do anything. All he'd ever done was something, even if it was to live one more day in spite of the wraith. It hurt, physically, like a blow to the stomach, to be so useless.
His own heart pounded in time with Sheppard's. "It'll be over soon. I swear, it'll be over."
Sheppard's body went suddenly limp, surging cold panic through Ronon's body. He pressed his arm tighter against the colonel's chest until he felt the thready heartbeat, and exhaled in trembling relief. The woman finished her cleaning not long after with about as much emotion as she would give to skinning a carcass.
Ronon didn't set Sheppard back on the pallet until she had tied the bandage and moved back to her own bed.
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Shadows and amber light chased each other all over the wet walls of the hole. If Ronon stared at them long enough, he could put shapes to them; just like those plays on Sateda where a man would hold his hands in front of a light in a way that made the shadow into something recognizable. When he'd told Sheppard and McKay about it during an overnight mission, Sheppard had turned on the light of his P-90 and showed Ronon how to make a bird.
Then he'd told them about things called sirens, and a story about a man named Odysseus who'd just wanted to go home. Funny the directions conversations liked to go.
Ronon shifted when a jut of wall dug into his back. He crossed one ankle over the other, careful not to bump Sheppard's head that was next to his thigh, close enough for the dark hairs to almost brush against it. Sheppard's breathing was louder than before; Ronon couldn't say whether the pain lines on the colonel's face were from the struggle to draw in air or the fever cooking his body. Every so often, Ronon would wipe more sweat from Sheppard's face and chest.
On the other side of the room, the old woman slept, while outside the storm still raged strong. Although it had been some time - maybe minutes, maybe hours - since anything attempted to break down the door.
Ronon darted his gaze to and from the window too fast for the darkness to suck him in. Either the nights on this world were long or the storm made them long. He could have sworn he should have, at least, seen hints of the dark blue of morning twilight by now. He did another wipe of Sheppard's face, then returned his gaze to his imaginary shadow puppets.
Sometimes Ronon saw animals chasing each other, stampeding, running. Sometimes he saw wraith, people, faces he knew. His old team, new team, new friends that might as well be blood kin for how much he regarded them as family. He saw Teyla's golden face bright with a warm smile and laughter; Rodney's courage and compassion hidden behind a sea of words and doubts; Sheppard's placid amusement that could make anyone feel at home around him. He saw Carson, too, gentle as a summer breeze and soft in a way that was actually a good thing. Some days, Ronon still privately mourned his loss.
Melena, smiling, laughing, holding sick children as though her touch alone could heal, and holding Ronon who really could be healed by her touch. Melena he thought of every day when he awoke, and again when he slept, because she deserved so much more and yet it was all he had to give.
If he closed his eyes, he could see her running over soft grass, dressed in the gown of white and pale blue that had been her favorite.
He did not let the things he could not change bother him. He could not stop himself from regretting.
Melena's laughter was like small bells. "Come chase me, Ronon. Come find me."
"Help me."
She ran far ahead of him, too fast for even him to catch up. Crystal white swallowed her like a living, hungry creature.
"Help me."
Ronon leaped into the stinging shards but still could not see her.
"Help me, please."
Then he opened his eyes to the chaos of shadows and firelight, and cursed himself for drifting off again. A quick glance at Sheppard showed him the pilot still breathing, if with more effort than was necessary. He would need the steam again. He reached out for the rag floating in the bowl.
"Help me."
Ronon stiffened, straining his ears to hear through Sheppard's wheeze and the moaning wind.
"Help... me..."
By the Ancestors... "Melena?" Ronon stood and faced the door rattling against the buffeting of the storm.
"Help me, please."
Ronon blinked. No, that hadn't been Melena. Teyla?
"Help! Help me!"
No, Rodney. It was McKay. Ronon twitched his head. This couldn't be right. They couldn't be here. He was just hearing things.
The wind weaves lies.
"Help me!"
Ronon took a step toward the door. Teyla again. They were out there, stumbling through the dark and snow and cold. They would die out there if Ronon didn't find them.
"Please, please help! Please!"
"Rodney!" The rasping cry ripped Ronon's attention from the door to Sheppard. The colonel was writhing, whipping his head back and forth with his eyes clamped tightly shut.
"McKay... Teyla. No. Noooo. Nnnn... C-come back. Come... come back. No, stop..."
"Help. Please." Teyla, Rodney, Melena - Ronon could no longer tell. He took another step toward the door, reaching out for the handle.
It is your friend the storm wants.
Nonsense, lies, superstition. There was someone out there who needed help, and Ronon was going to help them. He took a third step.
The storm will take your friend.
Stories, lies. The woman didn't know Sheppard. He was stronger than she realized.
"Help!"
Sheppard screamed a guttural sound, like a choke and a sob, "Nooo! Teyla! McKay! No! Please, come back! Don't... leave them alone... stop! Nnnn - no. No, no, no, stop. Please stop. Stop..." He arched off the bed with an agonized whimper, then rolled onto his side, reaching out for the wall to start pulling himself up.
Ronon stood there watching in a mix of numb fascination, horror and indecision.
"Help. Please... help."
Blood soaked fast through the bandage around Sheppard's middle and started to leak thin rivulets of blood and yellow discharge. The sight of it made up Ronon's mind. He surged forward, pulling Sheppard from the pallet to gather him against his chest. Dropping with his back against the wall, Ronon wrapped both arms around Sheppard's chest as the pilot squirmed and struggled weakly.
"Help... help..."
Sheppard whimpered and shivered, shivering turning into trembling. Each inhale spread his ribs to capacity until they were digging into Ronon's arms; each exhale carried a broken plea. Ronon could feel his friend's racing heartbeat and thought its speed impossible. It frightened him, making him wonder if it was possible for a heart to explode.
He hated this. Hated, hated, hated. He wasn't a healer, didn't have a gentle enough touch that could calm a distressed child, let alone a sick friend. He wasn't Melena or Carson, and he longed for them more than he had anyone. They would know what to do, what to say, what touches would soothe. So would Teyla. McKay... he would worry and fret and call medical science magic, all while warming water or rewrapping Sheppard's wound because Ronon had to hold the pilot down to prevent more injuries.
Why the hell wasn't the woman awake? How could she sleep through all the noise?
Ronon closed his eyes, squeezing them shut until his face ached. For seven years he'd been alone, and yet had never felt so alone as he did now, as though all the worlds were dead - swallowed into the void beyond the window - and it was just him and Sheppard. Soon to be just him.
Sheppard's body bucked when his breath caught on a wet slap. Muscles spasmed and struggled beneath Ronon's arms as if uncertain as to what they should be doing. The spine arched, pressing Sheppard's head into Ronon's collar bone. There were no more inhales or exhales, only stuttering chokes.
Ronon opened his eyes, glaring at the wall and beyond it to the storm. If it wanted his friend so damn bad, it was going to have to pry him out of Ronon's dead fingers. He may not be a healer, but he sure as hell knew how to fight. Leaning Sheppard forward, he started pounding on the other man's back below the fully-formed bruise.
"You're not going anywhere, Sheppard," he snarled above the shriek of the wind and the thud of his hand against Sheppard's body. "You hear me? It's not taking you, and you're not going to let it. I'll make it a damn order if I have to!" He hit harder, shoving aside the fact that he was hurting his friend. All that mattered, all that existed, was the means to let Sheppard breathe again.
Another hit, harder than the last, then another. The wind screamed, the door and window shuddered, a solid mass thudding against the wood, voices hissing in rapid-fire talk not even McKay was capable of.
Sheppard's fingers clawed at Ronon's leg, and his choking was swallowed by the chaotic sounds of the storm.
Ronon hit again. "Come on!" Again. "Breathe!" Again. "Come on, Sheppard, breathe!" Again. "Damn it, Sheppard, I order you to breathe!" Again and again and again...
Solid wet slapped against Sheppard's throat. There was a moment of silence beneath the noise of the wind. Ronon watched Sheppard's throat convulse in a swallow. Then he gasped, long and rattling and desperate, and Ronon gasped with him. The ribcage inflated, shuddered, then deflated when every muscle in Sheppard's body relaxed.
In, out, in, out...
Ronon dropped his head back against the wall to hold in the tears that threatened to spill. They fell anyways. He pulled Sheppard closer, gripping the colonel's shivering shoulder with his other hand, basking in warm, living skin and the fast heart that was still beating.
"That's good Sheppard," he said. "Good job. Just keep breathing." He looked in the direction of the woman's bed to see light flickering in the dark depths of brown eyes, the only part of the woman he could see. She lifted her shaggy head like an animal waking from hibernation and cocked an eyebrow.
Ronon grinned at her, feeling drunk in his relief. "Didn't even have to put waxed cotton in my ears."
She responded with a noncommittal snort.
Outside, the wind's shriek had weakened to a whistle and brooding moan.
-------------------------------------
Ronon paced circles around the DHD, kicking perfect trenches through the snow. He kept the Stargate in sight out of the corner of his eye, but most of his gaze was on the thin pillar of smoke rising from the forest bordering the meadow where the Stargate sat.
The constant irony of how much closer they always were to the 'ring than they'd realized never ceased to make him grin: sometimes amused, sometimes bitter. Today, he was amused. He and Sheppard would never have found the 'ring in the storm, and would have paid for trying with their lives.
The chevrons lit up and Ronon stepped back around to the other side of the DHD. The event horizon punched out, collapsing back into a puddle that rippled and slurped when a puddle jumper emerged to land several feet away. Ronon trudged after it, waving when the bay door lowered to the ground, then laughing when he saw Keller, Rodney, and Teyla with her arm in a sling, standing on the other side.
Once Ronon was aboard, to be interrogated by Rodney and to touch foreheads with Teyla, the 'jumper rose and just as quickly descended into the clearest space nearest the "hobbit-hole". Ronon led the way from the ship to the hill, with Keller, Teyla, Rodney and two Marines with a stretcher following. When they got to the door, he stopped.
"Just the doc," he said. "She doesn't want a lot of people inside."
"She?" Rodney asked with way too much curiosity to pull off sounding casual. Ronon didn't answer. He opened the door and stepped into the dry heat of the woman's dwelling. Keller gave the little hole the bewildered once-over of someone who'd never seen anything so rustic, then went straight for Sheppard, stretched out on the pallet, surrounded by bowls of steaming water.
It was when Keller began pulling items from her bag that the old woman feigned disinterest while her eyes skipped back and forth between the fire and the things Keller set on the floor.
When Keller cut away the bandages, she grimaced at the condition of the wound: no longer weeping or bleeding but still inflamed. "Definitely infected," she muttered. She adjusted her stethoscope into her ears and placed the other end to Sheppard's chest. What she heard incited another grimace. She moved quickly, setting up the IV, getting Ronon to hold the bag.
"It's a good thing you heated up all this water. The steam probably helped a lot."
The woman snorted caustically. "Probably, she says."
That had Keller blushing and stammering, "I - I just meant... you know... you did a good job... I'm not saying you don't know what you're doing..."
Ronon lowered his head to hide his grin. Keller was like Carson: soft, but in a way that was good.
When the IV was taped down and the wound rebandaged, the stretcher was brought in. Ronon and Keller switched places with Keller holding the bag so Ronon, with the help of one of the Marines, could lift Sheppard, wrap him in blankets, and move him as gently as possible to the stretcher. Sheppard didn't stir the entire time. An oxygen mask was strapped to the colonel's face before he was carried out.
Ronon hovered in the doorway as he stared at the old woman stirring her stew or medicine or whatever. She had wanted them gone by morning. The day was fading into late afternoon.
Reaching into his sleeve, Ronon removed the dagger with the wraith-bone handle he'd carved himself, and tossed it onto the table. The woman didn't even look when she snatched it up to slip it beneath her layer of skins, but Ronon still caught the upward curl of her lips.
"You do good work," he said.
"As do you," she replied.
Then he left, kicking through the snow to the 'jumper.
Sheppard remained unconscious the entire short trip. The 'jumper crossed the event horizon into home where a medical team and gurney waited to transport the sick. Keller let the team tag behind for only so long, chasing them off when they insisted on hovering while the doctor and nurses got Sheppard settled.
"Ronon, you need to be checked over, anyways," she said. "You can come back when I know you have a clean bill of health and your stomach's so stuffed you can barely stand it."
"Yeah, I think Hell will freeze over before that happens," Rodney mumbled.
Ronon complied without a single word of protest. He wasn't a healer, so had no place here. Still, it was hard leaving Sheppard, even with him in far more capable hands.
He let another doctor check him over, received a shot of antibiotics to play it safe, was released so took a shower, then joined Rodney and Teyla for dinner. There, he told them what had happened, how they had gotten separated, and why Sheppard was sick.
The storm, though, he kept to himself. He wouldn't even know where to begin in trying to explain it, and saw no real reason to. It had just been a storm that he and Sheppard had survived. There was nothing left about it to dwell on.
After dinner, the three of them returned to the infirmary to visit Sheppard. The colonel had been cleaned up and dressed in scrubs. An oxygen tube beneath his nose fed him enough air to make his breathing less noisy, and the heart monitor let them know he was alive. Ronon situated himself in a plastic chair, angling himself for his body to be closer to the head of the bed, and propped his feet up toward the end of the bed. The gentle murmur of McKay's and Teyla's conversation, and beep of the monitor, were almost hypnotic.
He didn't even realize it when he nodded off.
------------------------------------------
"Ronon?"
Melena? No, not Melena. The voice had been distinctly male. He gradually opened his eyes, first slits, then wider when hazel eyes looking bruised and sunken in a pale face stared back. The tip of Sheppard's tongue made a slow pass over his cracked lips, trying to wet them.
"Hey," he rasped.
"Hey," Ronon replied.
Lethargic eyes rolled in Sheppard's skull, up then down. "Guess we're home."
"Yep."
Sheppard nodded almost imperceptibly. "Being able to breathe... kind of gave it away." He looked directly at Ronon, gaze intense despite the bone-deep exhaustion. "Rodney? Teyla?"
"Fine, both of them. Teyla had a dislocated shoulder. It's healing."
Again, another nod, Sheppard's hair whispering against the pillow. "Good. You good?"
"Better than you."
That got a weak smile out of Sheppard. "Hey. Be nice. I'm sick. You're supposed to be nice to people who're sick." He then lifted a trembling hand to the side of his face and rubbed, sliding his fingers beneath the tube. "Damn. Don't wanna sleep anymore. I keep having these weird dreams." A shudder ran through his body. "I don't like 'em. They're... they're wrong."
Ronon pulled his feet from the edge of the bed so he could turn to pour water from a plastic pitcher into a plastic cup. Leaning forward, he lifted Sheppard's head enough to put the cup's rim to his lips. "Probably just the fever. Keller says it's going down, so you probably won't have them any more." He allowed Sheppard a few sips before pulling the cup away and setting his head back on the pillow. "But I'll wake you up if you do."
Sheppard sighed, a relieved exhale that seemed to melt his body into the bed. " You don't have to."
Ronon shrugged. "Got nothing better to do."
"How about sleep? You look like you need it."
Ronon waved his arm in the general direction of the beds. "Just need to pick a spot, and I'm a light sleeper, anyways..."
"Still," Sheppard began with a shrug as if it explained everything. It both admitted defeat while having the last word. He rolled his head to look directly at Ronon. "Thanks, buddy."
It wasn't the words, it was the expression that told Ronon that that 'thank you' encompassed far more than simply the runner agreeing to wake Sheppard from a bad dream. A look of soul-deep and pained gratitude that said words would never be enough. But Sheppard wasn't a man of many words, emotional words especially, and Ronon even less so. A single, simple thanks was always enough.
Ronon smiled. "Any time, buddy."
The end