John was found hanging from one of the sacred trees the villagers had shown them the day before. His skin had been burnt so red from the heat of the sun that it was impossible to miss him against the bone-white of the trees that surrounded him like nervous bystanders at a car wreck. Unable to make themselves leave, but too afraid to get any closer, as though finding someone alive and in need of help would be the worst thing imaginable.
Ronon reached him first. Rodney ran faster than he could ever remember running before, for Teyla still got there before him.
Why did he always have to be so slow?
But he was glad.
His voice screamed inside his head, and his heart tried to stand still at the thought of being the one to free Sheppard from the tree.
Even fifty feet away, he could see the blood that ran freely from wrists that had been rubbed raw from savagely tied rope.
Ronon threw his weapons away and leapt straight up, his hands wrapping around a branch as though he were as nimble as someone Teyla's size, and started climbing.
Even as he ran to catch up, Rodney couldn't help be be amazed at how agile his bear of a teammate could be.
He prayed that none of the branches would snap under the Satedan's weight.
By the time he got there, Ronon was making his painfully careful way back down from the tree, one arm curled around the trunk for balance, the other wrapped around an unresponsive John Sheppard's waist as he navigated the ancient branches.
However the hell those villagers had gotten him up there in the first place, Rodney didn't even want to know.
His bare feet burning in the sand beneath his feet—because they'd taken his shoes after drugging their food and kidnapping his friend—he had to resist the insane urge to leap up into the tree to help carry his friend, but the horror of the situation and the knowledge that his help would be anything but held him in place.
A day. A whole day. They'd been unconscious and tumbling around an insane dream land and shared nightmares for an entire day.
And all the while, Sheppard had hung crucifixion style out in the scorching desert sun while four-winged vultures circled overhead, and man-eating armadillos wandered the ground.
Ronon's feet had barely touched the sand before he had Sheppard scooped up in both arms like a child, and was striding across the burning ground in as close to a run as it was possible without hurting the one he carried.
Rodney and Teyla hurried to catch up with the Satedan's long strides, and this time, there was no silver lining to being the weakest person in the ground as Rodney's view of his unconscious or worse friend was blocked by Ronon's broad shoulders, the muscles of his back visibly twitching under the brown fabric of his shirt.
Rodney wondered what sort of unpleasant side-effects his teammate was suffering from. Whatever their food had been laced with definitely wouldn't have been approved by the FDA, and Rodney had a splitting headache to prove it.
...Unless that was just the heat getting to him.
Omoroca, as the natives called the planet, was notorious for its arid deserts and...eccentric customs. Nights only lasted five hours during the summer, and the days were brutally hot. You could literally fry an egg on a rock if it had been sitting in the sun long enough.
The locals lived in extensive underground warrens, which suited them perfectly, because the caves provided a natural defense against any Wraith that might have come looking to cull.
What better planet to form an alliance with?
So they'd thought. But that was before their 'guests'—more like prisoners—had been poisoned at the welcoming feast.
Rodney didn't often despise the condition that forced him to always have food available—because, really, who didn't like eating?-but this time, he had the gnawing doubt that maybe he wouldn't have been the last to wake up from the drugged sleep if he hadn't eaten quite so much food as he had. But he hadn't been able to help it. Most planets they visited weren't exactly known for their culinary skills, so when they did find one inhabited by people with a good taste for flavor, he tended to...overindulge.
Now he was regretting it.
Because Teyla and Ronon had refused to leave the small cave they'd woken up to find themselves in, and the hours that had been wasted waiting on him were hours added onto Sheppard's torture.
Rodney was glad the guilty part of him had such a loud voice. Arguing with himself, or, rather, not, offered a much needed distraction from the ache in his chest and head, and the agony of running barefoot over sand hot enough to fry eggs.
It also gave him an excuse not to think too closely on the effects of crucifixion.
It was only when Ronon began to veer away from the way that McKay knew the Stargate was in that he was pulled enough away from his thoughts to pay attention to his surroundings.
It took him a few seconds—and if that wasn't an indication of how messed up that drug was, he didn't know what would be—to realize that they were headed back toward the underground village.
He stumbled to a halt, feet skittering over sharp rocks and sending burning sand flying against Teyla's heels.
"Guys, the Stargate is that way!" He cried, gesturing with his entire body toward the almost invisible path they all knew was there.
Was the drug still affecting Teyla and Ronon?
Neither of them slowed down, and he was forced to run after them before they pulled too far ahead to hear him.
"Guys!" He shouted, panting from exertion when he finally manged to catch up, "Wait!"
"No time." Ronon growled.
And crap, but he was right. Rodney could see the outcropping of rock that hid the entrance to the village. It was only a matter of time before one of the sentinels that Rodney knew was watching alerted the rest of the villages that not only had the prisoners escaped, but that they were running right back into their jailer's arms.
Rodney reached out and had to leap before he was close enough to grab the back of Ronon's shirt.
"We have to stop!" He cried, trying to dig his burning heels into the sand, "We have to get him back to Atlantis!"He managed to hold on for a few short seconds before Ronon shrugged him off, but slowed to a walk, his breathing ragged and sweat visible in a V down the back of his shirt.
Rodney's stomach dropped. For some reason he couldn't fathom—and that was saying something—the Satedan was worse off from the affects of the drug than he was. A quick glance at Teyla revealed that the Athosian wasn't faring so well either.
"Rodney, there is no time to get Colonel Sheppard back to the Stargate," She said, her voice catching as she put a hand to her heaving side even as she continued doggedly forward across the burning sand.
He stubbed his toe on a rock he hadn't seen coming, and almost fell over from the shock of it.
But no small amount of pain—okay, no so small, because crap, that really freaking hurt—was going to keep him from helping his friends.
He jogged to catch up, eyes scanning the rock spires around them with anxiety, one hand held up to block the sun.
"What do you mean there isn't time?" He demanded, moving infront of Ronon with his hands held out as he walked backwards in an attempt to slow him down. Sheppard was pressed to the Satedan's chest, on arm curled over his stomach and the other swinging limply by his side. His legs—also bare footed—were folded over one of Ronon's arms, and his head rested in the crook of the other, his eyes closed and face slack.
Rodney cringed at the redness of his skin. Forget sunburn. He was probably in danger of skin cancer.
Even through the fabric of the sand-colored clothes he'd been shoved into at the welcoming feast—the villagers had been babbling about them being ceremonial raiment as a show of their respect for the Atlanteans, who John, as the leader of their team, represented—Rodney could see that the sunburn had spread over his entire body. The fabric of the clothes hadn't done anything to protect him from the sun.
Maybe that was the point.
Ronon glared at him despite his obvious exhaustion. "McKay, move." He said, "Atlantis can't help him." He brushed past him, his pace quickening again to a fast jog as the outcropping of rock drew ever closer.
Teyla grabbed his hand and dragged him along before he could fall behind. "The Sacred trees," she panted breathlessly as they raced after Ronon, "They are the prime feeding ground for the traiken moths." She made it sound like that explained everything. Except it didn't. It really, really didn't.
"Well so?" He demanded, yelping when his foot caught on another rock, "What the heck to they have to do with anything?"
She shot him a look so exasperated and bordering on anger that he knew he'd missed something important.
His mind scrambled to find a reason the moths had anything to do with Sheppard and why Atlantis couldn't help him.
They were harmless. With feathered antennae, segmented bodies, and a three-inch wingspan of V-shaped, half transparent things whose patterns depended on their gender, they were actually...pretty cool to look at. They weren't even some creepy form of carnivorous bugs! They ate fruit for god's sake!
But...something about them nagged at the back of his mind. Something he knew he should know.
The sudden burst of feathered wings and fiery pain raking along the top of his head sent him crashing to the ground as something slammed into his back as Teyla cried out in shock.
He hit the ground just in time for the screaming to start.
For one, heart-stopping moment, he thought it was John that was screaming.
Then his eyes that were burning with sand caught sight of the twitching lump of feathers lying a few feet away, an arrow sticking out of its side. From the way its feathers were almost pure white, he could tell that it had been shot hours before.
He shuddered, and scrambled to his feet. God, he hated those things.
The screams continued to issue from the dying bird's throat even as Teyla, with only a moment, dragged him to his feet and after Ronon again.
They weren't called banshees for nothing.
According to the villagers-who hunted them for food—the banshees remembered every sound they'd ever heard, and when they died, they shrieked it all out in reverse order at the top of their lungs.
They even had a story about a murderer that had been caught because a banshee that had heard him talking to his victims was killed by the chieftain's son.
His mind tried to the best of his ability to avoid thinking closely on why this bird was screaming, and in such a familiar voice.
He was so distracted that he didn't even notice when they descended through the tunnels that led to the village until they were already surrounded by the murderous, human-sacrificing natives.
So the stories about the banshees hypnotizing people were also true, then.
Rodney was expecting shouts of anger that they were alive, fear that they were back from the dead for revenge, or even apologies and awe, because obviously I they had survived, the gods loved them or something.
Instead, he was met with the quiet chatter of people going about their business, as though they weren't surprised at all to see them, as though this happened every day.
Rodney stuck close to Ronon, his hands twitching, wishing for a gun. People were tending to the subterranean plants they farmed for food and clothing, others were weaving baskets, and kids were running around in play, all of this illuminated by the glowing ball of light that hovered a few inches above the high ceiling.
This was too normal. This was too creepy. No one even spared them a glance.
Rodney was just about to start screaming that people look at them when Teyla appeared out of nowhere. Up until that moment, he hadn't even realized she'd been gone.
With her followed Kieranen, the village "dovarel", which apparently translated to "dragon-man" or shaman.
Rodney wasn't normally one for violence, but he was sure he would be able to make an exception for the one who had strung Sheppard up in a tree in the middle of the desert.
Kieranen didn't seem perturbed at all upon seeing them, though. He just smiled cheerfully. "Ah!" He cried, moving forward, his bald head shining in the light of their miniature sun, "You have returned Welcome, my honored friends, welcome!"
Rodney, for once, was too confused to say anything, and just stared incredulously down at the bald man in his golden robes. "What?"
Ronon chose that moment to stumble to the side, knocking Rodney off balance and almost dropping John.
He would have, too, if one of the village warriors hadn't leapt forward to support him.
Instantly, Kieranen's mood went from jovial to concerned. "The Stanis has not yet left their systems," he said to the warrior keeping Ronon upright, "We will take them to the guest chambers until it has."
Before Rodney could protest—his throat seemed suddenly drier than the desert air, and his headache had gotten impossibly worse—the dragon-man had taken Sheppard from an unreacting Ronon, and started to carry him away.
Rodney had just enough time to see Teyla collapse out of the corner of his eye before dizziness suddenly swept over him, dropping him to his knees as the world tilted to the side like a carnival ride.
His hands dug into the dirt floor, struggling to keep him upright on arms that suddenly felt like jelly.
One of the warriors tried to grab his shoulders, but he shook them off with a snarl, and lunged in the direction Sheppard had been taken, determined to get to his friend even if he had to crawl to do it.
He had gone maybe two feet before his lead-weighted limbs gave our beneath him, and the world blurred around the edges, before his eyes fell shut against his will, and his mind faded into the darkness of unconsciousness.
The pain in his chest was the first thing to register when he slowly regained his senses. It felt like his heart was being tugged loose, like someone had reached in, spread his ribs apart, and tried to rip it out with their bare hands, leaving behind a burning agony when they gave up.
But even as he curled instinctively into a ball against the pain, it started to fade, like a clenched fist releasing one finger at a time, until his dazed mind could comprehend something other than agony.
Something like the soft bed he was currently tucked into.
A blanket had been pulled up to his shoulders, and...
Was that fur?
He cracked one watering eye open just far enough to see the tawny material that made up the blanket the was covered in.
Yeah. Yeah, the blanket was made of fur.
He was just about to close his burning eye again when a blur of black captured his attention in the dim lighting of wherever the heck he was.
He blinked his remaining eye open, and struggled into an upright position under the stifling heat of the blanket.
God, a layer of cold sweat covered his skin. He grimaced in disgust and shoved the blanket away. They were in the freaking desert, and the primitives tried to suffocate him underneath a ridiculously heavy blanket? How the heck had they managed to survive for so long?
His eyes struggled to adjust to the near-pitch lighting, and he started moving his hands out around him to identify his surroundings.
His searching hands met a soft texture somewhere off to his left that resembled the fur of the blanket, and he pressed his fingers into it in the moment before he realized with shock and horror that it wasn't fur. It was hair.
He snatched his hand back as if burned, and stared with eyes wide as saucers at the spot, as though he would suddenly develop the ability to see in the dark if only he tried hard enough.
When that didn't work, he hesitantly reached out again, slower this time, as felt his hands brush against the soft texture of human hair.
His heart somewhere in his throat, his fingers gently traveled past the hair until they met something solid.
Fingers, warm and curled.
He froze, waiting for a reaction from the person the fingers belonged to.
Nothing happened. He pulled his hand back, and leaned forward hesitantly.
He thought he recognized that hand.
"Sheppard?"
His voice came out as a scratchy whisper. His throat felt like sandpaper, and he had to focus not to start a coughing fit.
John—because it was John, he was sure of it now—mumbled something almost too quiet to hear. Too quiet to make out, but it was him alright.
A whisper from across the room had him almost jumping out of his skin in fear.
"Rodney? Is that you?"
"Teyla?" He called back hesitantly, unsure if he would be glad or worried.
Because on one hand, if the entire team was in one place, then that was good, because it meant they would be able to defend themselves better than they would if they were alone.
And...on the other hand, it was possible they were all in the same place so that the psycho crazy hanging-people-from-tree-is-fun natives wouldn't have to go through as much effort when they decided to kill them.
"Teyla, what the heck is going on?" He whispered, squinting his eyes and trying to make her out in the blinding darkness. But it was as impenetrable as it had been moments before. "John's over here, he's still unconscious."
He swallowed thickly as a distressed sound he didn't know how to describe—whimper? Cry? Mumble?-issued from where he knew John lay just a few bar inches away. "I—I think he has a fever." He called softly, daring to reach one, terrified hand out to check Sheppard's forehead.
Even before his palm had a chance to touch John's skin, he felt the heat radiating off of him as air rushed into his lungs in a horrified gasp.
People weren't supposed to get that hot.
"Crap!" His voice exploded outward in a shout, and he frantically kicked the fur blanket as far away from his teammate as possible, crying out in a panic, "Teyla, crap, Teyla, he's burning up!"
The blanket safely far away, Rodney stretched his hands out infront of him and twisted around,
searching the immediate area for any obstacles or—god forbid—their fourth teammate. He was pretty sure that Ronon would kill him if it turned out he'd kicked him while he was unconscious.
Fortunately, Teyla called out again at that moment, proving his fears weightless. "Ronon is here as well," She said, her voice noticeably closer than it had been before, "I believe he is still asleep."
A hand touched his knee, and he jerked back with an undignified yelp of alarm, his heart slamming in his chest as he imagined a wraith looming out of the darkness to feed on him in the split second that it took him to realize they it had only been Teyla.
A laugh burst from his throat suddenly, and he shook his head, trying to dislodge his panic before he started freaking out. "He's not asleep, he's been drugged." he snapped, his breathing starting to speed up in anxiety, "Just like John. How—how do we get rid of a fever? We have to cool him down, right?"
He could still feel the heat against his hand, and his heart was pounding in his chest again. Humans weren't supposed to get that hot. Humans weren't supposed to get that hot. He pulled air into his lungs like it was threatening to disappear at any moment. "How do we cool him down?" He reached over to check John's forehead again—
—Only for Teyla to catch his wrist before he could.
"We don't." She said, grimly.
And then, with mounting horror, he remembered one of the other stories the dragon-man had been telling them at the welcoming feast.
He hadn't paid it any attention at the time. Why hadn't he paid any attention?
Because the moths—the traiken moths, the pretty, harmless, frugivorous traiken moths—they fed on the fruit of the Sacred trees, and spent almost their entire life cycle—around and inside the trees.
Almost their entire life cycle.
But not all of it.
Because the traiken moths—the Dust moths, one of the locals had translated for them—needed more than the fruit from the trees to live. They couldn't incubate their young inside the trees. They needed heat, and they needed...
They needed a human host.
And John had been tied to the trees, and his skin was red, but it wasn't from sunburn, and he had a fever, but it wasn't from being drugged...
And, before Rodney could even begin to truly comprehend the horror growing inside him, something changed in the air. Beyond the edge of his awareness, he could almost make out a sound.
And then—before he could react, because a chilling numbness had overtaken him, and he couldn't have moved even if he'd wanted to—John's skin started to glow with a sudden, golden light, illuminating the shadows under his eyes, and the raw wounds around his wrists, and turning the sand-colored clothes he wore almost completely transparent as the light shined through it.
Up his arms and down his legs, spiraling across his chest, thousands of pinpricks of light were glowing like uncountable stars under his skin. Only scars stood out as empty darkness against the golden light, tracing the lines of his past across his body.
The wounds he'd inflicted himself just a few weeks earlier were the darkest of them all, scabbed and ragged and painting a terrible picture of agony against his left arm. Rodney knew that if Sheppard had lifted one hand to the start of the marks, he would have been able to draw his fingers down them from elbow to fingertips.
Rodney hadn't seen anything himself. All he knew was that Carson had found him in his quarters a few hours after coming back from the mainland with the scientists he'd gone along to guard, clawing at his arm with his fingernails until blood was pooling on the floor at his feet.
He'd carved in deep enough that he'd needed to be sedated before he could hurt himself anymore.
This was the first mission they'd gone on since he'd been released from sickbay and declared fit for duty.
The lights—the moths—grew brighter, until they were blazing with golden light, like millions of glowing sparks trapped beneath his friend's skin.
And then, slowly at first, but quickly gaining in speed, they began to lift themselves into the air.
One moment, they were burning beneath John's skin, and the next, there were collecting in a swarm over top of him. There was no transition. It as as though they were ghosts, tiny spirits who had taken refuge in his friend's body. There was no blood, no sign that they had harmed John in anyway.
Already, the red was fading from his skin as though it had never been there.
Rodney suddenly realized he'd stopped breathing, and clamped a hand over his mouth, horrified at the thought of breathing in any of the tiny moths.
They were rising up toward the ceiling, illuminating almost the entire room with their glow. He could see Teyla's face, turned up to watch them in both alarm and curiosity. He could see Ronon slumped on the ground on the far side of the chamber, his eyes struggling to open against the suddenly bright light.
For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw a shape crouched on the floor next to John. A tail sweeping the dirt floor.
For a moment, he could have sworn he felt something brush across his arm.
And then the moths were rushing past him in a silent roar, streaming over his skin and into the darkness beyond like a flock of birds, twisting and spinning in on itself as though they were all connected by invisible ropes of consciousness.
And then they disappeared into the darkness, and like a light-switch being flipped, John suddenly jerked awake, gasping for air as though he'd been drowning, the pain and fear on his face visible even in the dim lighting that had returned with the absence of the moths.
In an instant, he had sat up, his breathing harsh and loud in the momentary silence as he scrambled backwards.
As though from a thousand miles away, Rodney watched as John pressed himself against the wall, staring wildly at the dirt infront of him as though something were hiding beneath it.
The world slowly draining of its colors, Rodney only had a moment to realize that Teyla had collapsed again before his eyes shut of their own accord, and he fell into darkness.
The tears streaming down John's face were the last hing he saw before gravity pulled him down into unconsciousness.