Chapter two

Lorne does not even have time to yell at his scientist again before the energetic botanist is swallowed by the forest before him and vanishes out of sight, with a howl into the radio which doesn't sound entirely voluntary, let alone happy.

Lathia is the first to move, Cadman, Baker and Parson on her heels. Lorne follows last.

The forest is full of boulders, vines, bushes and fallen trees, sprawling down a surprisingly steep hill as soon as they pass the first bushes. Parrish must have slipped and slithered down the hill ahead of them, so they dash wildly after him. The sudden change in flora and downhill gradient takes Baker by surprise, so he slips on one of the boulders with a not very manly cry, flails his arms to regain his balance, but loses the battle - and his gun.

He ends up gliding down face first over a couple of rocks into a nest of the red and green vines, which seems so deep that he vanishes completely in the greenery.

Parson dives after him and just barely avoids falling over trunks and vines on the way. Their slim scientist, however, stays ahead of them all and avoids any possible stones or sticks in the path of his slide. He's still yelling words nobody understands, and Baker and Parson curse and growl in a different corner of the woods so that Lorne is tempted to check on his men for a moment before following the scientist. He makes a sign to Cadman to move on ahead of him.

The two marines, however, appear out of the profusion of green and red just long enough to give their CO the signal to move on and save their scientist, so he changes direction again and follows Cadman downhill.

Cadman jumps and climbs over the stones successfully, but then slips, colliding with a tree; which leads to Lorne bumping into her as he nearly slips on exactly the same spot she did. Both growl from the impact but move on anyway; their scientist is probably already at the bottom of the hill, sounding either in awful panic or in highest ecstasy - Lorne hopes it is the first or Parrish will get a long and very colourful screaming fit worthy of a certain Canadian Genius.

Lorne emerges from the dense forest into a clearing at the base of the hill, still driven onward by his half stumbling run down, and almost crashes into Lathia who seems to be patiently waiting for their arrival. The place is full of countless marine and turquoise blue flowers, mud and puddles of water; plus, a very joyful Parrish bouncing around in the middle of the wet field like a thirty nine year old, loudly squealing little boy who is picking flowers for his – by now pretty grumpy - mommy.

The rain has stopped and Lorne shakes himself like a wet dog before he stomps over to his scientist with heavy steps. The clearing is one single puddle with the flowers poking out like water lilies and he's not happy to have the water seeping over the rim of his boots with every single step.

Cadman is the next to be spat out of the greenery and she growls as she slips and ends up face first in the mud. She's glaring in a way she clearly must have adopted from Rodney as she stands again, holding her shoulder, covered all over with mud, with vines and twigs sticking out of her hair at all angles.

It almost looks funny, if it weren't for the downright murderous glare she has on her dirty face.

"Don't tell me you took this stunt downhill because of a bunch of flowers!" she growls, stumbling to a halt before the pacing scientist. "Tell me you didn't..."

She seethes with words Lorne ignores for the sake of his sanity and follows Parrish back and forth among the flowers like a prowling tigress ready to pounce her prey. Given the time of the month all bets on Parrish's survival are off, Lorne thinks, and he rolls his shoulders before stepping into action between his team mates.

"What the hell have I told you about just running off?" he snaps, stomping along the field in Parrish's wake.

He's sure Sheppard has his scientist trained not to run off like that and he feels a bit jealous, before he concentrates again on yelling at his own.

"David!" He waves his hand at the scientist. "Do you remember rule three? The 'not just running off like that when you see a pretty flower' rule?" He wants to point at the flowers, at Parrish, at anyone around and complain that his shoulder hurts and that his nose tickles for some strange reason; but Parrish just ignores him (as so often) to pick another flower, mumbling friendly words at it as he stuffs it in a box.

At least it isn't raining anymore.

This is absolutely rule three of their nine Team Rules, established after months of working together and getting into all sorts of trouble. Half of them are about the quirks and addictions of several members, like 'don't run because of pretty flowers', 'share the chocolate on missions' (Cadman's) or 'beware of alien princesses/princes who want to play nice' (and he is sure the last rule is not the only one they have in common with Sheppard's team).

The Rules are meant to keep them all alive, not that they really hold to them so often, but it's nice to know they're there.

Baker is hobbling by the time the other marines arrive too, leaning on Parson's shoulder as they emerge from the woods. Parson, a real mountain of a man, leans his friend against one of the trees and stomps right up to Parrish as soon as he sees that there is an obvious lack of bloodshed or destruction waiting for them. Marines like him somehow tend to take the lack of action personally.

"You promised to not just run off anymore," he growls, red with anger – where his face is still visible under all the dirt - and nearly spitting.

Parrish picks flowers.

"Corporal Baker..." Lorne grumbles and waves the man back to help his team mate. Parson snarls, wipes the mud from his face and keeps glaring at the botanist, but he moves back to his friend. It's going to be a long and interesting post-mission briefing, Lorne is sure, and then he sneezes.

"Be pleased..."

"Thank you, Lathia," he stammers back.

Lorne is confused for several seconds; he has no allergies he knows of, so the sneezing comes to him as a surprise. He rubs his nose on his uniform sleeve without any evident cleansing effect and decides to be disgusted later; he has to get his team back to base and can yell at his scientist then.

"Parrish..." Lorne breathes in. This won't be pretty and Cadman senses the screaming coming so she turns and goes off to help Parson.

Parrish just decides to ignore the anger and comes up to his leader with an innocent expression.

"Major, look at this!" Parrish downright squeals and Lorne is taken aback enough by that sound to stop moving and simply stare. "Isn't this the most beautiful Hepatica you've ever seen?"

David twirls a single blue flower in his fingers directly in front of Lorne's face – while Lorne stands arrested with his mouth open – grinning with adoration for the beauty of nature and all that crap. Typically Parrish, and familiar right from the beginning of their team.

"Yeah, great..." Ranting would have no use right now, Lorne understands, really none. Not as long as Parrish is squealing and bouncing. Lorne wants to rub his face, in irritation and because the mud itches. He can't help picturing Parrish as a puppy, happily wagging its tail. Ranting now would be like kicking the puppy, and who'd want to do that?

"Look at this Lathia, each flower is more beautiful than the last..." Parrish turns to her with yet another squeal.

The dark haired Athosian woman observes the flower in Parrish's hand patiently and smiles a serene, patented Teyla-smile as the man continues to pick his flowers. Lorne rubs his tickling nose and rolls his shoulders again. His left one will be pretty sore later, in fact damn, it is already.

"We do call these flowers 'Bahesem' but the closest name in common tongue would be moon flower," she says.

Lathia is as patient as ever, the standard Athosian reaction to the eccentricities of earth scientists, but has this underlying vibe of 'strange earthlings' radiating off her. Lorne can't do much but smile at her in a helpless way – perhaps a bit apologetic too – and feels painfully like an alien himself.

"Moon flower. Yes, that's indeed a beautiful name," Parrish continues as he searches for a few more containers to bag the flowers for later observation. "We call them Hepatica nobilis, or common liverwort."

Lathia tilts her head and nods and Parish stuffs the next flower away, patting the bag of containers lovingly. "And what a wonderful example she is."

"They are indeed..." Lathia gently helps Parrish to put on his backpack and starts to push him forward.

She has a lot of Teyla about her; the clear features, the dark eyes and the patience of a saint when dealing with scientists. "...but you should not have left the team in such a rush because of these, Dr. Parrish."

As well as the broad collection of silent ways to master them, because Parrish nods and suddenly takes in that the rest of his team is there too.

"Oh," he says.

Lorne ignores him and just signals the team to move with a simple swirl of his hand, leaving the woman to deal with the scientist. "Cadman you lead, find a way up... I'll take the six."

Cadman gives a last disapproving glare and moves, Baker and Parson following slowly behind her along a line of boulders and stones along the margin of the blue field. It's drier here and the vines and bushes haven't overgrown it completely yet, so it's easy to find a path upwards.

"Oh... Oh..." Parrish blinks as he watches the others move, as if noticing only now that the rest of his team is moving away from him.

It's just that he always loses it a bit when he sees botanical beauty in all the perfect glory only nature can create. It has been like this since his childhood, when he admired his desert home bloom after a hot summer rain.

He feels so sorry all of a sudden, so very sorry and he turns around, hurrying back to Lorne under the patient and approving eyes of their Athosian friend.

He catches up to Lorne with an awkward smile, mumbling apologies.

"Sorry," Lorne mutters with a sigh and grasps his P-90 harder, raises his head and looks up the hill to where the grey sky is coming through. He hadn't seen the field from up there but Parrish probably had and sprinted off – before slipping.

"Fine. Look, Parrish..." he starts but Lorne's second violent sneeze stops his words and echoes across the clearing. Another sneeze follows before Lathia can even open her mouth to wish him blessings and he just snaps his mouth shut and decides to yell at Parrish later, and move before he sneezes his brains out over the crappy little flowers.

"Be pleased..."

He nods his thanks to Lathia who smiles in return and gestures for Parrish to move. "We'll talk about this later. Just let us get the hell out of here..."

Lorne sneezes again, once, twice and a third time in a row before they finally cross the field to where the others are searching for a path uphill.

Sometimes he wonders - especially during such moments - why he had raised his hand as General O'Neill had searched for people to join the mission. On the other hand, he has a good team and they actually work pretty well together when it comes down to it. The strange scientist is just part of the inventory of every gate-team. He can't really complain; today has just been a shitty day and a shitty mission, will probably turn out to be a shitty briefing later on, too.

His team is a good team.

But sometimes, yeah, sometimes, God help him, he'd rather have McKay on his team.

He shudders and steps onto a rock that's lying there in the blue field. Just so he won't sink any further into the muddy flowers, which turns out to be the wrong move, because the rock gives out under him a moment later and he falls into a dark pit.

The impact is hard and knocks the air out of him for a second. Then water comes down from above and nearly drowns him with mud and flowers.

Yeah, a shitty mission, absolutely.

TBC