Here it is. Its short.

Part 2

Indigenous warriors had surged over the riverbed, overwhelming their position with clubs raised, razor sharp instruments and screams.

The five off-worlders never stood a chance. The only two still on their feet were Ronon and Carson. Beckett's attention was directed solely on Rodney and the darkening pressure bandage that became increasingly saturated.

A club had swung down to smash the skull of the colonel as he lay unconscious in the mud. Beckett lunged over Sheppard, raised a fisted hand, wrist leading the elbow and angled the blow away with the slope of his forearm.

The loud crack of club on bone was deafening and sickening.

With club deflected. Beckett shifted back to McKay, numb to his own injury.

Ronon broke the attacker's neck as if it belonged to a goose. The half-naked native crumbled and twitched to the sloping bank, his head at an odd angle.

Beckett still leaned on McKay, putting desperate pressure on the bubbling wound. Pink foam rolled from the corner's of Rodney's mouth.

Carson struggled with starting fluids, tearing heavy plastic bags with his teeth, running lines with mud and blood caked fingers, praying for a miracle but knowing better.

Terror pooled in Beckett's eyes.

Dex pivoted, swinging left and right, maintaining a defensive arc around his downed team. Mud and blood swung from his corded hair. Dark eyes goaded the natives, dared them to attack, silently taunted them to defy him.

Suddenly the warriors stopped their charge. It was as if someone had hit pause. The surge of attackers inexplicably ceased as if on command.

Warriors froze and stared at the five off-worlders. They stared around the wild warrior with death in his eyes and hair as mangy as any beast of the forest. They focused on the pale skinned man who wove magic and battled death in a strange manner.

Beckett simply held the top seam of two IV bags in his teeth and kept one handed pressure on the wound that bubbled blood up around the grotesque cross-bow shaft in McKay's stuttering chest. Carson's left arm bulged slightly just below the elbow.

Ronon kept himself between the masses of men and his team. He swiveled his gaze in a tight arc, daring the aggressors to break his line of defense. His right leg dangled uselessly, his foot buckled over onto his ankle. Sheppard laid spread eagle on the bank where he had fallen, blood caking his face. His P-90 lay, chamber open, smoke wisping from its blackened barrel. Teyla lay crumbled across McKay's akimbo legs, unmoving. The delicate rise and fall of her chest, the rhythmic outlining of her ribs against bronze skin exhibited the only sign of life.

The warriors, with their painted faces and torsos and bare legs backed away from the small dirt ravine where the off-worlders had sought a defensive position, not by choice but by force.

The aggressors backed off, chattering softly to one another, whispering and pointing at the stranger that knelt beside his fallen friend not of caring of those that attacked them.

Ignoring the weapon that lay strapped against his leg.

Without a sound, the forest cleared of warriors, leaving the team alone. Eyes stared at them from trees and from around trunks. They watched mesmerized as bags of fluid were drained into the arms of a man soon to be dead.

Strange magic indeed.

The Satedan recognized the superstition that kept the warriors at bay. He had seen it on other worlds. They were worlds that the Wraith visited too often, societies culled back to rudimentary survival. The Wraith sometimes 'overgrazed' ripe cultures, wiping them back to their infancy.

Superstition and omen reigned supreme where law failed and order decayed to chaos.

Ronon did not truly understand the fear and awe that paused the attack on his team, but he was no fool. He would utilize whatever advantage he could to save his friends.

These hunters would not risk the wrath of their Gods by attacking the one who battled death so blatantly.

Beckett would be safe---for now.

Ronon scooped up Teyla, fearing for her safety more than the others for reasons that he would never let be told to her and hobbled the best he could for the gate, dragging a useless leg. He left Beckett his personal gun, his sword lay unsheathed in the mud next to the discarded clot glued bandages. He had wondered if Carson even registered his absence.

-------------------------------

Cloaked jumpers had shot through the event horizon. They settled atop the ravine, uncloaked and spilled teams of marines and their combat medics. Swarms of personal converged on the three. A perimeter was set up and a staunch international force of armed soldiers stared back at the glistening eyes of natives that watched from the shadows of the forest.

In no time, the Atlanteans were back in their city.

Morrison and his team rushed McKay to surgery with Beckett still calling his stats, cradling his own arm close to his chest. Thomas took Ronon's leg, leaving Beckett by default to tend to Sheppard and Teyla's head wounds and contusions.

The urgency in the cases made them impossible to ignore or made to wait. Carson gave orders while his nurses streamed about performing tasks better than most trained physicians.

By rights Beckett should not have been overseeing cases once back through the gate. The lack of personnel made it impossible for him to step down from his responsibilities. The medical department was short staffed until the Daedalus returned in three weeks time. With his arm packed in ice, supported by a sling, he developed a plan, his nurses carried it out. He interpreted data, they completed the treatments.

It was a team effort. Not much different than an off-world team where health and lives remained balanced within the fine intricacies of trust and faith.

Eighteen hours later, McKay, still lingering in the grey world of recovery, more out of it than Ronon and Sheppard were comfortable with witnessing, was going to make a full recovery.

Within 33 hours, Ronon was back to walking with a painfully noticeable limp, but with the ability to place his foot properly. He had the assurance that the nerve damage would not be permanent.

Teyla's headaches were fading.

A few days in the infirmary and Sheppard could now stand without suffering vertigo.

With their recovery, Beckett became scarce. It was rumored he was searching for an oscillating saw to remove his cast.

A cast, which had been placed after the members of SGA-1 were out of danger. Beckett then succumbed to imaging and finally the sedative effects of painkillers and adrenaline let down.

Colonel Sheppard and Teyla left the commissary together to hunt down Beckett. It was this dogged determination to find their missing friend that led them to this particular pier, in the late afternoon.

Beckett shifted and curled onto to his side. Teyla quickly reached forth and snagged the mug of tea before it spilled.

Sheppard shook his head and rubbed at his eyes.

The fishing line jerked, the reel ran out just tad and clicked. The fiberglass rod bent slightly tilting forward in its makeshift pivotal holder.

And the man, who could sleep through the most hellacious thunder storms, had snored his way through a tornado, napped through a roaring rush of a nearby flash flood, bolted upright at the simple click of the fishing reel.

In one fluid motion he sat up, grabbed the pole one handed and anchored it against his foot and chair.

"Need a hand?" Sheppard smirked.

And Beckett jumped, kicking over his tackle box, sent a pair of wire cutters sliding a few feet across the pier, and whipped around.

The colonel noticed the sawed, tattered chunks that had been removed from the cast. Morrison was going to have an aneurism.

"Don't just stand there, man," Carson ordered, barely awake with an imprint of the chair pressed into half his shadowed face. "Grab hold."

The colonel raised an eyebrow as his mind took a wrong turn down innuendo lane.

Sheppard took the fishing pole and with Teyla's help the two tried to coax a fighting Atlantean sea bass to the surface. The colonel tried to follow the sleep roughened, dictatorial accent that groused orders at them with strained patience.

Sheppard decided Carson took his fishing a bit too seriously or needed a nap.

In the end, the line broke, Sheppard fell backward, knocking over a closed jar of pickled juice with bits of soaking blue floating fiberglass.

Teyla laughed and Carson simply shook his head despondently. He rubbed at bruised fingers which were a little less hidden by his partially, crudely cut and dissected arm cast.

Sheppard sat up, dropping his heels to the ground and laying the fishing pole to the side. He stared at Beckett, squinting up through the glare of the late afternoon sun.

Their eyes met for just a flash of time, just enough to measure the moment.

A heartfelt thank you sat unsaid at the tip of the colonel's tongue.

A spark of silent tension built.

Beckett quickly shifted his gaze. He studiously ignored Sheppard, fumbling with repairing his line.

The colonel nodded, quietly relieved that Carson had ignored him.

Sheppard pushed himself to his feet, and gathered up the jar of pickle juice and floating bits of blue fiberglass. He studied it for a bit, thinking back to the grotesque cloudy jars that lined the shelves of his high school biology lab room.

All Carson was missing was a floating eyeball. Sheppard shuddered and put the jar down.

Beckett continued to ignore him. Teyla helped the CMO with threading the new line.

She glanced over Beckett's hunched shoulders and smiled knowingly at the Colonel. With that slight upward curve of her lips and tiny flash of white teeth, she playfully mocked him and men in general for their inability and clumsiness at expressing gratitude.

Dr. Beckett was no different. There were degrees to the foolishness of men.

Sheppard twisted his face at Teyla in good humor and then turned his attention to Beckett, who worked the line with unparallel skill.

Sheppard watched silently.

Carson displayed his dexterity by simply tying the line with one hand.

Just a few days ago, those same steady hands were drenched in blood and terror sparked his expression.

Thanks didn't need to be exchanged.

Meaningful looks would be uncomfortable and unnecessary.

Besides, Sheppard figured he'd leave the touchy-feely semantics to Teyla. She was better at it, and it was definitely more suitable to accept a delicate head butt from her than a thankful hug than from another guy.

Sheppard shivered.

Yeah, he'd leave the Hallmark stuff to Teyla. She was better at and Carson would appreciate it more.

-The end.