Wow! Thanks everyone for the encouragement and nice comments! I say again that all errors are strictly mine. I may even fix them, if I can figure out how the edit feature works!

Guarding the Shepard

Chapter Four:

So I sat in the dining room, turning over in my hands a PDA and comm Zelenka had brought with him. I didn't make it for breakfast, so I was claiming this was brunch. He was very pleased with whatever he was trying to show me, and I let him take it back and demonstrate it for me.

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I had slept pretty soundly, waking myself up only once when I rolled over onto my right ear. I tried to see what time it was but I couldn't get my watch in focus. I decided it was quarter after too-damned-early, and went back to sleep.

I woke slowly the next time, and took inventory before trying to move. Seems a lot of my body had gone out to a party without me. I was stiff, bruised, and my wrists had joined the collection of aching joints. Must not have gotten tucked in tight enough when I landed yesterday. I had a vague headache and the quilters were trying to sneak back into my right ear, but the noise was a lot better in my left. Now when I covered the right ear, it sounded more like I was at the bottom of a barrel, and a there was a waterfall nearby. Covering the left ear just gave me all the static and interesting percussion back beat I'd had when I'd gone to bed.

I pushed the blankets back and started to sit up. Slowly. The dizziness was still there, but not as bad. I must have made enough noise to attract attention because Teyla came around into my field of view. She gave me a pleased smile.

"...mo..."

"Hey! I heard some of that! Good morning!" Then my brain caught up with the rest of me. "What are you doing here?" I pulled the blankets back up a little. Not that I mind pretty women in my bedroom, its just that I like it better when I know about them before I wake up.

"We ...ot...wat to leave...oo...owne." And I swear there was a little impish smile when she saw me tugging on the blankets.

"Leave me alone?" I was getting long vowels and some hard consonants, but that left a lot of the English language still lost in the static.

A quick frown. "No! ...ot...owne."

"Ah. You didn't want to leave me alone. Okay." I looked around. Rodney's bed was missing all the blankets but didn't look slept in. Teyla had turned the chair around from McKay's desk. It looked like she had been mending a piece of equipment; there were scraps of leather and some metal circles.

"Um...where's Rodney?"

She shrugged a little and smiled again. I got a couple of sounds out of her answer, but she spoke too fast and I couldn't catch enough to assemble a reasonable guess.

"Never mind." I wanted to use the bathroom, but I wasn't sure I could stand up. Teyla tapped her earpiece and I saw and heard a "b" at the beginning of her conversation, and figured she'd just let Carson know I was awake. I managed to get sitting up straight and let the room settle down. I started to push the blankets back down again, and Teyla rose gracefully to come over to the side of the cot.

"I'm good. Just going to the bathroom."

She nodded and folded back the blankets from my legs. She held out a hand and I thought about it for a moment.

"Let me get my feet under me, first." She watched while I cautiously rotated on the cot, getting one foot and then the other planted firmly on the floor. Things swung around me a bit, but I was pretty sure I could handle it. I scooted to the edge of the cot, took a deep breath, and pushed myself up.

Teyla's stronger than she looks. Good thing, too, or I would have left my face print on McKay's floor. She caught me by my upper arms and stood me back up. Between the stiffness of bruising and mistreated joints, and the tendency for the world to square dance around me, it took me a couple of minutes before I was sure I was going to stay standing up.

"Really, Teyla. I'm fine." I took a couple of tentative steps and she slipped to my side and put an arm around my waist. She also gave me a patented Rodney McKay eye roll. "And I saw that."

The impish smile was back, but I didn't resist the support. The room still had a disconcerting tendency to swirl around a bit, and somehow having her steady grip on my shirt helped ground me.

I wouldn't let her in the bathroom, but she did get a change of clothes for me and toss them in. I know, I know. It isn't like I have anything she hasn't seen before, or hadn't had her care for me when I've been sick or injured, but I like to maintain the illusion I have some control over when that happens. Besides, its easier when I'm in the field, or the infirmary. It just seemed wrong in McKay's room. I decided I didn't want to pursue that thought any farther.

When I opened the door, Carson was standing in the room, smiling. I walked carefully back to the cot. If I didn't move too fast, and didn't pick my feet up too high, it wasn't bad.

We were able to make it through his exam using a combination of what I could hear, what I could guess at, and his PDA. He cautioned me again about dizziness. Yup. Got that one down pat. I got a bottle of something to help stop the vertigo, or at least slow it down, and Tylenol with codeine for the pain. I hate codeine. Makes me feel slow and stupid. However, as the alternative was to continue to allow the quilters and all their little needles have at the inside of my ear, I accepted it with a grimace.

Teyla reappeared with a glass of juice and showed it to Beckett for his approval.

Carson shook three pills into my hand–two of the Tylenol and one of the other. He handed me the juice and scribbled on his PDA. "Take these now. As soon as you feel more steady, I want you to eat."

The idea of eating wasn't appealing at the moment. "I don't know about the eating part, Carson." He backed off a bit. Must still be too loud. "Sorry."

"I know. But this should make it easier. Don't try for a lot at one time. You'll be more comfortable if you can just eat a small amounts throughout the day." I got a pat on the shoulder. "I'll check with you later." He paused to talk to Teyla and then left.

There wasn't anything I could really lean against–the cot was more or less in the middle of the floor–so I pulled my legs up and sat cross legged with the pillow behind me, and sipped the rest of the juice. It was something from off world. I didn't recognize it, but the flavor was sort of grape-like, without the astringency of grape juice. I was surprised when I finished it.

Teyla took the glass and held out her other hand. "Do...eel...ike...eat...?"

I looked around the room. The furniture was sliding back and forth, but wasn't moving as far or as fast. "Give me a couple minutes, Teyla. Let's let Carson's little pharmacy have a chance to prove itself."

She smiled in understanding, and turned her chair back around to the desk. She set the empty glass near her project, and picked up some kind of metal working tool.

That was one of the things about Teyla. Maybe because her people had already been through so much, she had a kind of calm that seemed to say things are under control or things will be under control soon. McKay tended to be very focused, but that wasn't the same as calm. Not to mention the man was incapable of sitting still for any length of time. Radek was beginning to let us see a wicked sense of humor, but still alternated between nervous frustration and nervous delight. Ronon had been a Runner for seven years before we found each other, and I think he still didn't trust himself to be calm. Elizabeth always seemed calm, but I think its diplomatic calm. Don't let anyone see you sweat, kind of calm. Like if she could keep absolute control over her own emotions, she could extend that control to situations around her. I've seen it work–seen scientists settle down enough to solve a crisis, junior Marines win skirmishes against the odds–and even been at the receiving end. Somehow, situations seem better if the person in charge doesn't look like they're panicking.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jerked my head up. Damn codeine. I was going to sleep sitting up.

"...eat..." She wasn't giving me a choice.

I let her help me up, and it really was better. I was still walking on egg shells, but the Alice in Wonderland feeling had allayed considerably.

Still, I was glad to sit down again in the dining room. I guess it takes a lot of energy not to fall over.

I was nibbling toast and contemplating some kind of cooked cereal grain when Zelenka showed up. He plopped himself down across the table from me and started talking a mile a minute. His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as he shoved a comm and a PDA over to my side. I tried to keep up, but he was talking too fast and the sounds I could get wouldn't arrange themselves into words.

I waved a hand in front of me. "Whoa there, cowboy. Any chance of slowing this train down?" Teyla gave me a look that said she hadn't gotten the cultural references, but I didn't feel up to trying to explain them right then. And I had misjudged how loud I was because several people from surrounding tables had looked over in surprise. I gave them what I hoped was a cheery grin. "Sorry."

Radek took the PDA and transceiver back. He booted up the PDA and clicked on the comm. Holding the little mic in front of his face he said, "How are you today, Colonel?"

I knew that was exactly what he said because the words had typed themselves out on the PDA screen. He laughed at the look on my face and continued, "Writing on PDA was inefficient. This is better, no?"

"This is better, yes!" I snatched the comm away from him and held it out to Teyla. "Say something!"

She looked at Radek and me with amusement, then said, "It is good to see you feeling better. Please finish your toast."

I watched the words scroll by. "Cool! Radek! This is just...cool!"

He gave that aw shucks its nothing little finger wave, but I could see he thought it was seriously cool himself.

"Does it work with all the comms?"

Zelenka shook his head and took back the mic. "No. I adapted only this one. It is small rewrite of common software program. Not perfect, but good enough until you recover, I am thinking."

Radek and I played with his little invention for most of an hour. During which time Teyla plied me with more toast, brought me more juice when I asked for coffee, and finally took it away until I agreed to eat some of the cooked cereal. It was like when my mother would take away my toy airplanes at meals and not give them back until I'd finished. Radek and I both glared at her, but she seemed to be immune. However, we did determine it had a pretty decent range, at least to across the room, and that it didn't handle accents very well.

When I had eaten enough to satisfy her for the moment, she held out the PDA. "Major Lorne tells me it will still be several hours before your room will be habitable. Dr. Beckett said you are not to exert yourself. Would you like to return to Dr. McKay's room and rest?"

I liked the idea of not moving around much. Radek's special PDA had certainly distracted me for a while, but I could feel myself getting restless. I didn't want to read, I didn't want to do paperwork, I couldn't exercise, and although the Tylenol with codeine was keeping the quilters at bay I was out of sorts...so the best thing left to do was annoy Rodney.

"Nah. Can you locate McKay?"

"He was in Lab Four when I came here," Radek offered.

"Then I think I want to go to Lab Four." I stood up too fast and had to hold onto the edge of the table until my eyes stopped rolling around. Teyla had jumped up in concern, but I got my feet under me and smiled.

"I'm good. Just gonna have to learn not to move so fast for a while."

"I am not certain going to Dr. McKay's lab is what Dr. Beckett meant when he said 'rest'," she frowned.

"I'll be all right. I can irritate him sitting or standing. He's not the only one who can multi-task."

Teyla clearly didn't believe me, but graciously handed me off to Radek, who offered to walk me down. We made the same rate of progress as an arthritic turtle, and I had a bad moment going down a set of stairs, but we got to Lab Four without either of us falling on our faces.

Sure enough...there was Rodney, nose in his laptop, a couple of lab techs in orbit. They looked anxious...he looked superior. A variety of small items were spread around the workbench, but I couldn't tell what he was doing.

He looked up as I walked in, and scowled. He started to talk, and the lab techs fled like the devil himself had appeared in the middle of the floor. "Heads up!" I said, and tossed him the transceiver.

"It's a comm. So what." He turned it over in his hands and set it on the workbench, continuing to glare. His glare wasn't as good as mine, but he was improving. "And what are you doing out of bed? You can't tell me Carson's Voodoo book had a note that said 'release Air Force Colonel with the brains of a watermelon today'."

I ignored him. Rodney hates it when he's ignored. Instead, I held up the PDA, where the end of his last sentence was still displayed. "Cool, huh? Radek made it for me!"

He motioned imperiously. "Give me that."

I sat down on a stool across the table from him and handed over the PDA. He fussed around with it a minute, then handed it back dismissively. "I could have done that."

"I'm sure you could have, Rodney."

"And you're too loud."

"Not a problem. You're too soft. It evens out."

He paused to glance at his laptop screen, then looked back. "Well, you're walking without looking like the living dead. That's something."

"Yup, but bored."

"Oh, lucky me. You're bored, and Carson has probably told you you're confined to your room, except wait! Your room still looks like the morning after a frat party, so you decide to come and interrupt what I'm doing instead. And I repeat...does Beckett know you're here?"

"Yes, definitely, and probably not."

He threw his hands up in the air and started rearranging some of his little Ancient bits closer to himself. "I am so not going to listen to one of Beckett's lectures on following medical advice if he finds you here. So how about if you just return to wherever you're supposed to be and let me get on with my work."

I snatched back the comm. "Fine!" Rodney McKay didn't have the market cornered on bad attitudes, and I didn't think I had the patience today to cajole him into amusing me.

I stood up too quickly again, and the room whirled around. I grabbed for the stool and took a half step to regain my balance. It possible Rodney levitated to my side of the workbench, because after I'd taken a couple of deep breaths to convince brunch to stay where it was I opened my eyes to see him taking the comm out of my hand. He pulled the stool closer and shoved it under my butt.

"Fine! Stay if you want! But there's no throwing up in my lab!"

I sat back down and let out a sigh. It did feel better to stay in one place.

"Well, what makes you think I want to stay here? Maybe I'll go see what Zelenka's doing."

He pointed a finger at me while he went back to his laptop. "Sit down. Shut up. Since when is Zelenka's work more interesting or important than mine? You're staying until you stop looking like you're going to faint when you stand up."

"Pass out."

"Fall on your face and bleed on my floor."

"Not gonna happen."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I can see how steady you feel." His face changed with mercurial speed. Its one of the things I like about Rodney. There's no pause for transition. He just goes full speed ahead from one emotion to another. It can be difficult when he's in a snarky mood, but kind of exhilarating to keep up with. "Er, how do you feel? Are you hungry? Did you get anything to eat? Do you want a drink?"

"Teyla made sure I ate. Really, I'm fine. Carson says I'm going to be dizzy for a while yet, but gave me some pills that help. Got some for the pain in the right ear, too. All in all, not 100, but better than I expected."

He made a noise the PDA didn't try to print out. "Teyla. She probably fed you smelly leaves and toasted grass." He rummaged around in a drawer on his side of the table and pulled out several power bars, a bag of something that looked like jerky, a package of powdered Kool-Aid, something that might be bread sticks, and a snaplid container of dried fruit. Jeez! The man has his own grocery store hiding in here! He shoved everything except the Kool-Aid over towards me. "You can start on these. And if you ever tell anyone I have this stuff, I'll deny it to my last breath and make sure you never see another Milky Way for the rest of your life."

I smiled. McKay must have a doting grandmother somewhere in his background. His answer to most problems was to feed them. Well, except when he was the entree. The Wraith didn't count because although they were a problem, 'feeding' them involved allowing them to suck all the life out of you and leave you a dry husk decades older than only a few minutes previously. I'd seen the leftovers of that kind of feeding and didn't want to see any more.

A touch to my hand brought me out of my thoughts. Rodney was looking worried again. He had brought over a mug of water, and had already opened one of the power bars and was holding it out to me.

"Just thinking, Rodney." He looked relieved, and I took the power bar. While he checked on his laptop again, I sipped the water, which felt good in my codeine-dried mouth, and read the power bar wrapper. Guava? Who in the world thought guava would make a good flavor for a survival food?

He banged on the table to get my attention. "As long as you're here, we might as well do some sorting."

Sorting?

He rolled his hand in a come on, you know what I'm talking about motion. "Sorting! I have a whole box of Ancient technology we've picked up here and there. Well, actually more than one box, but I think we can start with just one. Box, that is. I've already taken out and categorized the pieces that did something when I touched them, but there's still a lot that didn't do anything. You can sit there and eat, and touch them one at a time. See if anything lights up for you."

"Ah, none of these things are likely to bite, sting, electrocute, impale or otherwise perform actions I'm not likely to appreciate, are they?"

He looked offended. "Of course not! Well, I'm pretty sure not, at least the ones that activated for me were clearly just pieces of something else." He was wandering into blustering. "No! Of course not. Probably."

Well, it was better than trying to read War and Peace.

So we settled into a routine. Rodney had happily carried over a box of miscellaneous bits and pieces from one of the store rooms and set the box carefully on the end of the table. He dithered a bit, then decided he wanted to start with the items he already had spread out. He would point to one, I would touch it or hold it, and then he would spend 15 minutes or more typing furiously and talking to himself. When he noticed the mug was empty he'd take it over to the sink and absently refill it while still talking to himself. Most of the stuff didn't do anything for me, either, but I did get a couple to vibrate or light up.

After a while I my eyes started to get that dry scratchy feeling that comes with being tired and trying to keep them open. I propped up my chin in the palm of one hand and closed them once in a while. I had to grin, though. Every time I opened my eyes, one of McKay's carefully hoarded treats had mysteriously migrated closer to my side of the table. My elbow looked like it was being surrounded by a squad of Grocery Store Guerillas.

I was half dozing, sort of aimlessly sweeping the table for the next piece of junk when I was startled by Rodney's loud, "No! NO!" My hand was slapped away and I was startled enough that I lost my balance and nearly banged my chin on the table top.

"What the hell, Rodney!" The sudden movement had started the lab swinging around in a very unpleasant fashion, and the quilters were taking advantage of the distraction to try and sneak a few more needles into my ear.

"No! Stay! Don't move!" He was yelling loud enough that I could make out his words with only some background interference. He practically flew around the table and pounced on the hand I'd been using to poke at things, pushing it back towards my body.

"Rodney, what is going on!" I was angry at being manhandled and couldn't see what the big emergency was.

"Don't move!" Rodney repeated, and after making sure I was going to sit still like a good boy, rushed to the other side of the room and came back with what looked like long wooden tongs. He separated out one of his precious Ancient bits and turned it over. A red X had been drawn on a flat side, next to what looked like a string of tiny numbers.

"This is not supposed to be here." He was practically shaking.

"All right." I spoke slowly, trying to help him calm down. "Take a couple of deep breaths and tell me what the problem is."

Some color came back in his face, and he made an angry gesture at the gizmo. "This is not an uncataloged item."

I motioned him to continue, one eye on the PDA.

Another deep breath. "You have to understand, Colonel, that this is a laboratory. As fascinating as Ancient technology is, it doesn't do any good to just wander around, chaotically playing with anything we come across. It has to be logged, cataloged using a variety of defining fields, and carefully studied." He motioned again at the offending widget. "Items we test that demonstrate harmful properties are marked with a red X to make sure people with the ATA gene don't handle them by accident."

He set down the wooden tongs long enough to type on his laptop. "And here it is." He turned the monitor around to show me, but the words slid around back and forth sickenly.

"Bottom line, McKay."

He turned the laptop back around. "You'll remember this one, Colonel. It gave you second degree burns when you picked it up, and was still hot enough to scorch my hands when I tried to catch it when you dropped it."

Oh, yeah. I remember that one. Hard to forget blistered fingers, not to mention Beckett's stretching exercises--to make sure the healing tissue didn't pull my hand out of shape.

"Well, how the hell did it wind up out here?" Now I was pissed off.

"How the hell am I supposed to know? It isn't like I picked it up and carried it over, and then hid it carefully in all this other stuff, with the warning nearly covered. If I hadn't seen part of the red marking, either one of us could be watching Beckett smear goop on our hands as we speak." He disappeared into the storage area he'd first retrieved the box from, then came back out. "There's definitely a gap in the storage unit. But I don't understand. The red marked items are kept locked in a glass fronted cabinet, and that cabinet is clearly labeled as dangerous. The glass isn't broken and the cabinet is still locked."

He made to pick up the gizmo with the wooden tongs and I interrupted. "Are you sure you should do that?"

"Its fine as long as I don't actually touch it. Wood appears to be as good an insulator in this galaxy as it is in ours." He got a hold of the whatever with the tongs and carried it cautiously back to the store room. He returned and sat down with a sigh.

"You know, Rodney, you have a point." I was thinking this through, and thinking more codeine wouldn't be a bad idea. But I didn't want to take it just yet, knowing my brain would turn to lint. "You wouldn't have taken that thingie out and left it on your workbench. In fact, no one with the gene would have dared. But somehow, it got out of that locked cabinet and appeared right where you would have eventually picked it up. I don't think I like the sound of that."

McKay blanched. "You think someone did this on purpose?"

"I don't know what to think right now." And that was the truth. The quilters were trickling back in, and the room was refusing to stay still. It was time for another set of pills and I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.

Rodney pulled another comm out of a workbench drawer and deftly set it in place. "Major Lorne, this is McKay. There's been an incident in Lab Four." There was a pause, and then he continued. "No, no, there aren't any injuries, so get off the line, Beckett." Another pause. "Yes, Sheppard's here, but that doesn't automatically mean we've blown something up, set it on fire, caused it to melt...well, all right, so it does often mean that, but not this time! So get down here, Major, and pretend you have more training than just how to shoot things." He clicked off the comm and dropped it back in the drawer.

"I think its probably better that I not be here when Lorne arrives," I said casually. "After all, I'm on medical leave." I didn't even get all the way up before Rodney was pressing me back down on the lab stool.

"You're staying here. You're a witness. And you look like shit. So just sit."

"How long have you people had me confused with canines?" I snarked. But McKay was busy transferring his hoard of food into another drawer. I knew Lorne would find it when he searched the place, and I'm sure McKay knew too, but there wasn't any reason to leave it out in plain view.

"Well, that's too bad, because I have no intention of being here when Lorne comes pounding down with a squad, expecting to see the lab in ruins and one of us nursing a concussion. So I'll talk to you later!"