Author's Note: Hi All! This fic was originally posted in the 'zine, Jumper Three. I hope you all enjoy it. Warning for naughty language.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the creators of Stargate Atlantis. Additionally, I am not receiving any compensation for this piece of fiction.
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Four Times Five is Twelve
By Emrys
"Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!"
~Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
John opens his eyes and sees the sky. It's a deep purple, a wondrous mass punctuated by crystalline-looking stars that he thinks he can touch if he stretches far enough. Cool air moves across his supine body, and his mind clears—just a little—with the caress of the refreshing breeze. He blinks, slow and lazy, and hears the rushing sound of wind pushing its way through the spaces between leaves. He coughs, then takes a deep breath that smells like red and orange autumn. In the distance, he hears wind chimes. Their sound is almost like a song he knew in childhood, but it's twisted and untrue. He doubts his senses.
Another slow blink coupled with a second cough, and the sounds around him change. They morph from the calm and easy noises of an autumnal evening to the squawking and outraged complaints of the perpetually irked.
He's not terribly surprised when Rodney McKay's face blocks his view of the stars.
"I blame this entirely on you!" McKay says.
John has no idea what the physicist is going on about, and can only squint in a desperate fight for concentration. He can't recall being the cause of any situation.
"I didn't do anything," he claims. His voice is rough, and his tongue is thick, like a piece of used up chewing gum between his teeth. The words come out clumsy and unclear, but this doesn't seem to present a problem to the increasingly irate McKay.
"My point exactly!" he crows. "You didn't do anything. Isn't it your job to keep us from getting into these sorts of situations? Or at least take on the responsibility of getting sucked through weird force fields that may or may not have a time-related component associated with them? I thought that was part of your job description. Not mine!"
John feels his forehead involuntarily crinkle with confusion. Another breeze passes over him, and he wishes he could just relax and enjoy the sensation.
"You could have at least volunteered to go first!" McKay's ranting continues, and it's amazing how he doesn't seem to need a breath between sentences.
"McKay, I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you calm down and give me a minute to catch up?" John's tongue still feels thick and clumsy, but the words come out clearer this time.
"I seriously doubt we have a minute, Colonel!" Rodney says, the irritation plain on his face.
He moves out of sight, and John is trying to sit up to assess the situation when Rodney abruptly returns. He desperately pulls at his hair, and his eyes are wild with frustration and just a little panic.
"God! My hair's going to be gray, isn't it? Oh, God! We're going to get back, and my hair's going to be gray!"
It's at this moment when John manages to sit up and gain a better understanding of the situation. The last thing he remembers seeing, before ending up flat on his back with a perfectly nice breeze brushing over him, are the darkened hallways of the abandoned and distant parts of Atlantis. In the middle of an uncharacteristically quiet couple of routine weeks, he and his team were edgy to do something useful. He had volunteered them for an exploratory expedition into the bowels of Atlantis. All was normal and boring until he got here.
"Where the hell are we, McKay?" John asks, studying the landscape. Because it is a landscape, not the inside of Atlantis. There are trees, towering and filled with the multi-colored leaves of fall, and the moon shines full and bright in the nighttime sky above. He takes a deep breath and is startled to realize that the rich odors of autumn he sensed before are real and not solely part of distant recollections. It smells like the memory he has of two weeks spent in New England when he was a kid. He remembers loving the feel of the air at night, the vague sense of adventure everywhere.
"Stop looking like an idiot," Rodney snaps.
John realizes he had zoned out. In the next instant, he realizes McKay is a little freaked out or he wouldn't use that particular tone on him.
After a tense moment, Rodney relaxes, and his ex-pression turns to one of concern. "Are you all right?" he asks. "You've been unconscious for a while."
"I'm fine," John says, and then realizes he's still sitting and that convincing Rodney of his "fine" status would go over a lot better if he actually stands up. He climbs to his feet with a little effort. The moon still spins dizzily in the sky once he's vertical.
"You don't look fine," Rodney says, subdued. "And don't try to deny it. The moonlight's bright enough I can see you actually look a little green. Not exactly a natural color."
John figures he better focus Rodney on something other than his apparently green complexion.
"McKay, where the hell are we?" he asks again.
"I'm not exactly sure about that," Rodney says, hesitantly. "But the way we got in here reminds me an awful lot of that time dilation field you stumbled into last month."
John grimaces unhappily. Being stuck and alone in an Ancient wonderland is not one of his fonder memories.
I can't really be this unlucky, he thinks. But as an afterthought he realizes that, yeah, actually, he can.
"Don't assume the worst, McKay," he says, hiding his own doubts with forced optimism. "You don't know for sure there's a time dilation, do you?"
"Of course I don't know for sure, but it would make sense, wouldn't it? Being knocked out and useless after traveling through a strange force field? And what the hell, Sheppard? Do you even know me? Hi, I'd like to introduce myself: Doctor Rodney McKay, physicist and most intelligent man in the Pegasus Galaxy. Oh, and by the way, I'm smart enough to know when I'm in deep shit!"
"McKay…." John drawls, unsuccessfully trying to interrupt the physicist's panicked tirade.
"What alternate universe do you inhabit that it's not always the worst situation? Especially when you're in the mix!"
Despite McKay's echoing of his own, earlier thoughts, John is surprised enough by Rodney's demeanor to say something in a tone sufficiently sharp to grab the physicist's fractured attention.
"What exactly are you saying, McKay?"
"I'm saying that trouble follows you!" Rodney exclaims, obviously exasperated. Then he notices that Sheppard looks peeved and tries to ease the accusation. "You! Us! What's the difference? I'd just rather be prepared for the worst than be taken by surprise, is all," he says, a little grudgingly.
Sheppard opens his mouth to argue, but is shocked to discover he has nothing to say. Rodney is right, and they're both just going to have to deal with the situation in the best way they can.
He takes a deep breath in an attempt to ease his own tension and raises his hands placatingly.
"Okay, Rodney. Okay. Let's take a moment to figure this out."
"Figure what out? What's to figure out? We stepped from one room to another and ended up in the middle of freakin' nowhere!"
"Is that what happened?" John asks, puzzled.
"What?"
"Was it one step to the next? Are you sure about that?"
"What the hell's the matter with you, Sheppard? Yeah, it was like that. Knocked me for a friggin' loop. I fell flat on my face. One minute there was nice, smooth floor under my feet, and the next I was stepping through weird force fields and tripping on mole hills and clumps of weedy grass!"
"Wait, I thought you said you were knocked out," Sheppard says, grasping at straws.
"Well, uh, no, not exactly. You went limp and unconscious, but I just, well, uh, tripped."
"Huh," Sheppard says, thinking and evaluating his own condition.
"'Huh,' he says," Rodney grumbles. "Brilliant."
"I don't feel like I did with the time dilation. I was never knocked out then. And it took a lot longer to get my body back under control. I wasn't able to stand up so quickly."
"That's because parts of you crossed over the dilation at different times than other parts of you," Rodney says. His tone is that of an impatient teacher trying to get a dull student to understand the simplest of concepts.
"Still, this feels totally different. Don't you think? I mean, all your parts crossed the dilation at the same time when you came to get me. Did you feel the same as you do now?"
Rodney takes a moment to think and then grimaces.
"No," he admits. "I guess you're right."
"Okay, then. Let's not assume the worst."
Rodney grumbles something, but Sheppard's ears are ringing and he misses it.
"We'll get out of here, McKay. Don't worry," John says. "The others will figure this out."
"Hello! Smartest man in the Pegasus Galaxy!" Rodney cries out tauntingly, pointing both of his thumbs at himself. "I'm the guy we want out there trying to figure this out!"
"Zelenka will think of something," John says.
"Zelenka's an idiot," Rodney mutters. "My cat has more sense."
"He's the one that got you out of that Wraith dart," John replies in stubborn support of the good-natured Czech.
"Oh, and look at how well that worked out! You have no idea what it's like to have a girl stuck in your head! And she was pushy!"
"All right, okay. Let's just figure something out on our end then," Sheppard says, and wishes he could sink to the ground and go back to sleep. It's then he realizes he has everything with him that he had when they left on this half-assed mission. "Hey, do you have any equipment? Anything that could identify an energy signature?"
"Well, yeah, right here," Rodney says, pulling a detector out of a vest pocket. "But it's not picking anyth—"
"What?" John asks, dismayed by McKay's sudden distraction.
"Huh, that's weird," Rodney says thoughtfully.
"What's weird, McKay?" John asks with forced patience.
"Oh, it's just before when I tried to find life signs or energy signatures, there was nothing. Now there's an energy signature." Rodney's attention returns to the screen. "Must have been the initial effects of the force field we walked through. Probably made the detector go all screwy or something. Still, it's kind of weird."
"You said it's picking up an energy signature?" John asks as a headache begins to pound relentlessly behind his eyes.
"What? Oh, yeah. In fact, it has the same energy signature as a stargate."
"See! Well, there you go, Rodney. We just need to find that gate, dial home, and all's well that ends well. I told you not to think the worst. Sometimes things just work out."
"It's kind of far though," Rodney grumbles disparagingly, but he enthusiastically steps toward the direction of the signal.
"Wait, wait," John says, experiencing a stab of pessimism that isn't entirely unexpected. He grabs Rodney's shoulder to stop his forward momentum. "Are you sure it's a stargate, McKay?"
"Well, not having much else but this, at best, adequate piece of equipment, well, then, no, I'm not sure." He smiles, though, and then points happily at the scanner. "But if it walks like a stargate and talks like a stargate, then…." Rodney doesn't finish the sentiment, but then again, he doesn't have to. He also looks too happy with himself, so John lifts his hand and lets him go.
He sighs heavily and rubs heavy fingers into his aching eyes before following.
They walk through the pleasant evening. There are gently swaying trees surrounding them, but the grassy path they follow is wide and continues on into the far distance. It's a nice night and easy traveling, and though John is on alert, he finds himself enjoying the stroll.
"Reminds me of the area around my folks' old vacation home," Rodney mutters, wistfully. "I loved that place. Jeannie did, too, but we didn't go often."
"Makes me think of this place in Connecticut I went to when I was a kid," John says, sharing Rodney's reminiscent mood. "There was a carnival there with the biggest freakin' Ferris wheel I'd ever seen. Don't know how they carried that thing from one town to the next."
Rodney smiles briefly but doesn't say anything for a while. When he does, he's back to business.
"It's another twenty miles or so before we get there," he says, squinting at the glowing detector.
That thing must be hard to read with the moonlight bouncing off its screen, John thinks. He complacently studies the moon and thinks childhood thoughts without wondering too hard why they are so strong in his mind right now. It's the moon and the trees and the nighttime breeze that are responsible, and he's happy.
Until the pain in his head spikes, and he grunts with the intensity of it. That's when all hell breaks loose.
Rodney is calmer than he ever thought he could be given the situation, but he supposes it's because there's a stargate in the distance and the traveling is easy. Things could be worse.
And then suddenly they are.
Behind him, Sheppard grunts and stops walking. Rodney turns, because, really, the guy's been looking sick since he woke up. And no one's face—seriously, no one's face—should be that particular shade of green. When he turns, he sees Sheppard put a hand to his head and then drop to the ground in a tumbled heap.
"Sheppard!" Rodney yells, and then the ground is gone from beneath his feet.
Literally.
Gone.
Rodney cries out in fear as he drops a good ten feet, only to be gently caught by the freakin' ground! and lifted thirty feet in the opposite direction.
Up.
Way, way up.
He tries to grab onto something, anything real and tangible, but nothing's at hand. Instead, his body is propelled higher. On the belly-plummeting, barf-inducing way up, he catches a glimpse of Sheppard's limp body flying downward. He can't tell if the man is all right, or conscious, or even fucking alive, because suddenly they're out of each other's sight. Rodney's body spins, and tumbles upward, and then abruptly stops.
He has a moment to stare at the bright, silver moon, before he realizes he's sitting on top of a small mountain—or at least a freakin' foothill. He's being held aloft by the ground which is cupped around his body in a protective, chair-like way. He has another moment to contemplate hurling all over himself when the ground disappears beneath him, and again he's falling.
He doesn't even get a chance to vomit.
He screams the whole way down.