A/N: This is an old one - like, 5 years old. But I realised that I'd somehow never posted it here. I remembered writing it but couldn't find it on here... managed to find it on LJ and thought I'd add it here too. This was written for a secret santa fic exchange and the prompt was for a story where Sheppard gets hurts whilst saving a team member.
The heavens opened without warning. One minute they were walking easily over gently sloping terrain, chatting and joking, looking forward to getting back to Atlantis in time for a late lunch, and the next a deluge of icy cold rain hit them seemingly from nowhere. Seconds later lightening arced across the murky sky, making Rodney flinch, and a low growl of thunder rumbled from one side of the valley to the other.
"Jeez!" Sheppard squinted up at the rapidly darkening sky, the heavy rain already beginning to flatten his hair, streaming down his face, making him blink rapidly. "Where did that come from?"
The light was fading rapidly, heavy clouds rolling in on a quickening wind, turning the cool freshness of early afternoon into the bitter chill of early evening. Rodney hunched his shoulders against the cold, grimacing as he felt icy rainwater trickle down his neck and under the collar of his jacket. "Oh great," he complained bitterly.
"Alright guys, let's pick it up a little," Sheppard suggested, increasing his pace up to a brisk walk. Ronon shrugged deeper into his heavy coat and followed suit, Teyla falling into step behind him. Squinting against the driving rain, Rodney huffed his displeasure as he brought up the rear.
"Remind me again whose idea it was to walk instead of bringing the jumper?" he groused.
Teyla didn't look around at him, her head bowed against the pounding rain, but her voice was as calm as ever as she reminded him, "It was not possible to safely land the jumper near the outpost, Rodney."
"Well, we could have flown at least some of the way," Rodney grumbled, unhappily aware of just how far they still had to walk to reach the gate, "instead of walking all the way from the gate."
"McKay…" Sheppard's exasperated growl was almost lost in another heavy rumble of thunder.
Rodney's teeth were already starting to chatter, the driving rain seeming to soak straight through his clothing, chilling him to the bone. The outpost they'd come to investigate had turned out to contain nothing of any interest, let alone value, to the expedition and Rodney was rapidly regretting ever agreeing to come on this mission; he had half a dozen important projects he could be working on right now and his lab on Atlantis was nice and warm. He shivered. He'd almost forgotten what warm felt like and he was certain he was already starting to get frostbite in his extremities.
The previously easy walk through open scrub and grassland was quickly becoming a tedious trudge as the ground turned to mud under the team's feet; thick and viscous, it sucked at Rodney's boots with every step and more than once he wobbled a little as his feet slipped on the mud. This sucked.
The rain stung against the skin of his face like a million tiny pin pricks; it was coming down so hard that Teyla, walking just a few feet in front of him, was just a blurred shape moving through the watery gloom. Ronon, beyond her, was little more than an indistinct blob and he couldn't see Sheppard at all.
Just when Rodney thought he was as miserable as it was humanly possible to get, the ground underneath his feet simply disappeared. It happened without warning, his feet slipping sideways in a wash of mud and loose earth as the sodden ground crumbled. His cry of alarm was swallowed up by the pounding thrum of the rain and suddenly he was falling, sliding down the face of a precipice that hadn't been there seconds ago.
He landed on his side, the impact knocking the air out of him, and was carried helplessly downhill, dragged along by a growing torrent of liquid mud and debris. He flailed wildly, scrabbling for purchase, but there was nothing solid to grab onto, the water-saturated soil and gravel losing cohesion and joining the downhill surge. He was gathering speed, bumping off unseen obstacles, mud and water sloshing over his face. He choked and gasped, spitting dirt out of his mouth, and let out a desperate scream.
Scrunching his eyes shut against the deluge of mud, his flailing hand brushed against something and he clutched at it in desperation, rough bark scraping his palm as it slipped through his grip. He held on as tight as he could and was rewarded with a sudden jerk that nearly pulled his arm from his socket as his body swung around, his downward slide abruptly halted, leaving him dangling helplessly. He opened his eyes to find he had managed to snag hold of a low scrubby brush; bowed and bent by the force of the mudflow and by his weight dangling from its twisted branches, it was somehow, for the moment at least, still clinging on to the now steep slope.
Thick, soupy mud was still flowing rapidly down the surface of the slope, pulling at Rodney's body, surging over his arms, and spattering against his face, forcing him to lift his chin clear of the flow for fear of suffocation. There was no sign of the mudslide slowing; if anything it seemed to be growing larger, flowing faster. Rodney's arm was already beginning to ache, his hand cramping as he clung on desperately to the bush. How long before his strength gave out and the tide of mud carried him away… or until the torrent of mud and rainwater washed the bush's roots free of the remaining soil and dragged it – and him – to a muddy grave?
"Rodney?!"
The sound was so faint that he thought he'd imagined it. Then it came again, a little closer this time, a hoarse cry whipped away by the wind, almost lost in the thrumming of the rain, the surging slap and roar of the mudslide.
"Rodney!"
He coughed and spat mud.
"Down here!" he cried, weakly.
For a long moment there was silence and Rodney despaired; they couldn't hear him. They'd never find him in this deluge.
"Rodney!"
He almost cried with relief.
"Hang in there, buddy! We're coming to get you!"
Sheppard. Thank god. Rodney gritted his teeth against the bone-deep cold, the growing ache in his arms, the insistent tug of the mudflow pulling at him. His team had found him. Sheppard would save him.
He hung there, clinging to a thin, wet branch, for what felt like an age, hearing nothing but the relentless pounding of the rain and the odd rushing, slapping sound of tons of mud sliding past him, seeing only the grey murk of the saturated skies above and the dirty brown sludge below. Eventually, just as he was beginning to wonder if his team had given up on him, a shape appeared through the gloom somewhere above him. As the shape slipped and slid closer it resolved into a figure – tall, lean and with ridiculously spiky hair that not even a torrential downpour could entirely flatten. Sheppard.
He slid and scrambled closer to Rodney, barely managing to stay upright as the mudflow tried to pull his feet under him. As Sheppard got closer, Rodney could see that he was hanging onto something, some kind of rope… except they hadn't had any rope with them and this was too uneven and bulky… With a slightly hysterical giggle Rodney realized Sheppard had tied together clothing – his shirt and jacket, Teyla's jacket, Ronon's coat – to form a rudimentary rope and was using it to perform a slip sliding abseil down the hillside.
Sheppard was breathing heavily as he scrambled to Rodney's side, his clothes wet through and splattered with mud. He was stripped down to his BDUs and t-shirt and the exposed skin of his arms and face looked white and bloodless under the coating of mud. Hanging onto his jerry-rigged rope, he struggled to brace himself against the surging river of mud.
"Hi, Rodney." Sheppard's teeth were chattering as he spoke. "You okay?"
Rodney was wet, cold, aching, exhausted and terrified, the muscles in his arm were cramping up and he couldn't feel his fingers anymore. He was about as far from okay as he could imagine right now. He gave Sheppard a glare and rasped, "Oh, just peachy!" Exhaustion robbed his retort of any real bite. Sheppard, the gung-ho idiot, grinned, rain sluicing down his face and dripping off his nose.
"What say we blow this joint?" he suggested breezily. Rodney was shivering too much to do much more than nod. Still using his improved clothing-rope to balance himself, Sheppard offered the end of the rope – a sodden shirt sleeve – to Rodney to grab hold of. But his arm felt as heavy as lead and his free hand was stiff from the cold; try as he might he couldn't get his fingers to properly grip the sodden material. His other hand was by now completely numb, clamped in a death grip around a bit of scraggy branch. He couldn't feel his fingers to move them and, to be honest, he was scared to try; for what felt like forever his tenuous grip on this stunted little shrub had been the only thing keeping him from a cold, muddy grave.
"I… I can't…" he croaked.
"Hang in there, McKay" Sheppard ordered. "We'll try it another way."
With a lot of scrambling about, his feet sliding dangerously in the mud, Sheppard somehow managed to slip the end of the clothing rope under Rodney's outstretched arms and loop it over his back, knotting it securely into a loop. He gave the rope a single tug and Rodney felt it pull taut under his armpits.
"Okay buddy, now for the hard part."
The hard part? Surely it couldn't get any harder than this?!
"You gotta let go, Rodney."
The thought terrified him. If he let go, he'd die, he'd be washed away and drowned in mud. Besides, he was pretty sure his fingers would never move again from their clenched position – the cold and the strain had turned them numb, cramping the muscles in place.
His hand was so cold and numb that at first he didn't even feel the touch of Sheppard's hand on his, not until Sheppard started to pry a finger loose – and then the feeling returned to his hand with a vengeance in the form of sharp, stinging pain as the cold, stiffened muscles were forced into movement. Cold terror gripped him as his hold on the branch was slowly loosened and for a split second, as his grip relented, he was fully expecting to plunge to his death. But the clothing rope tightened around him, taking his weight, and then fear of imminent death was quickly replaced by agony as the abused muscles in his arm shrieked in equal parts relief and torment as they were relived of supporting his entire weight.
Scrambling to stand astride him, Sheppard gave the rope two sharp tugs and, with a lurch and a jerk, the rope tightened again and Rodney felt himself being pulled upwards, against the flow of mud. Progress was slow and tortuous; the mud cascading down the slope pulled at him, reluctant to let him go, it slopped up against his chest, splashing onto his face, making him grimace and spit, craning his head backwards to keep it clear of the mud. The rope moved in fits and starts, jerking him up the slope in increments, and Rodney could only guess that Ronon and Teyla were somewhere at the top hauling it in hand over hand. He tried once or twice to help, scrabbling to get his legs under him, but his body was bruised and battered, chilled and aching, and he simply hadn't the strength. All he could do was hang at the end of the rope and let them drag him to safety.
Throughout it all, Sheppard was there with him, moving alongside him, hanging onto the rope to steady himself as he slipped and staggered uphill. More than once Sheppard lost his footing and fell, the fast-flowing mud pulling his feet out from under him, leaving him clinging to the rope along with Rodney until he managed to get his feet back under him and struggle upright.
After what felt like an age, two blurry shapes appeared through the gloom up above. With each jerking pull of the rope, the shapes became more distinct, until finally Rodney was dangling just below the lip of the precipice, blinking up at a bedraggled Ronon. Rain dripping from his dreadlocks, Ronon's teeth were bared in a grimace as he hauled in the rope.
The last few feet were the hardest. The rain-soaked earth was dangerously unstable, the lip of the precipice crumbling and dissolving each time Ronon and Teyla tried to haul Rodney's weight up over it, mud and dirt raining down onto Rodney's face. In the end Sheppard moved behind him, bracing himself as best he could on the loose, slippery mud, and letting go of the rope in order to lift from behind.
Twice they almost made it, Rodney's weight teetering on the lip of the slope before the ground under him once again crumbled, his weight dragging him back down into the mud. The second time, there was a muffled yell from behind him as Sheppard lost his footing. Only by grabbing hold of Rodney's ankle did he avoid getting washed downhill himself.
"Sheppard, we got this!" Ronon shouted as Sheppard hauled himself to his feet. "You need to get out of there!"
"I'm good!" Sheppard insisted. "Let's give it one more try."
Rodney braced himself once more as Ronon and Teyla heaved on the rope and Sheppard pushed against his legs. Little by little, Rodney was dragged and pushed jerkily upwards until his torso had cleared the lip of the slope, the ground holding steady under him – for now. If he'd had the energy he would have kissed the ground in relief. As it was, he was all too conscious of his legs still dangling out over the steep drop. Sheppard was hanging onto his ankles, using them to balance himself even while he continued to shove Rodney further onto solid ground.
With one last tremendous effort by his team, Rodney slid the last few inches to safety. Wet, cold and exhausted, he lay helplessly in the mud like a landed fish, gasping for breath. And then, for the second time in one day, the ground simply fell away from under him. He gave a yelp as another couple of feet suddenly crumbled from the lip of the slope, collapsing under him, his legs once more dangling down the steep incline. There was a startled cry from behind him and suddenly he was sliding backwards, a heavy weight pulling at his legs.
"Sheppard!" Ronon yelled desperately.
Rodney felt like he was being pulled in half; the rope of twisted clothing was pulled tight under his armpits and the weight he knew had to be Sheppard was a deadly anvil dragging him downwards. And then suddenly the weight, the pressure around his ankles, was gone. The clothing rope lurched and Ronon and Teyla quickly dragged him to safety.
"Sheppard!" Ronon dropped the rope and ran to the cliff edge.
Rodney struggled to get up, his limbs stiff and slow to move. Teyla rushed to his side, helping him to roll over. He blinked up at her. "What happened?" he gasped. "Where's Sheppard?"
The despair on Teyla's face was answer enough.
Continued...