Teyla sleeps for a long time. Now that she no longer has to fight for anyone, all her remaining energies are redirected into the battle for survival. Her mind is raw and still healing its own wounds, and cannot help but flinch away from a consciousness that threatens to sting like salt.

She opens her eyes to a scalding light that pierces her eyes like arrows. She squeezes them shut, but not soon enough to prevent the flare of fire in her skull, forcing a gasp out of her. Something is wrong; the air feels thicker and comes slower than it should. Her body, normally young and strong, feels like a dead husk, fragile and useless as a dried leaf. The blood in her veins is sluggish and heavy forcing her heart to beat harder and harder, pounding hard enough to make her teeth vibrate in her head. All she can feel is the angry clamour of her heart, like a wild animal battering its cage,

"Teyla?"

The ring of her names cuts through her fear like a chime through fog. Something warm flushes through her veins, calming the drums in her chest, and as the air thins, she drinks it in like liquid.

As the thud of her pulse fades, she can hear the murmur of conversation, the steady affirming beep of monitors. The air, now passing easily into her lungs, has a slightly medicinal tang, and as she opens her eyes, she sees a brown, pink and yellow face, whose smile ties it all together in two words.

Atlantis

Home.

It seems a long time before she can open her eyes for more than an instant, and even longer before her mind emerges from the protective fog that had encased it. When she finally begins to feel like herself again, it is evening in the infirmary. The lights are still on, but mercifully low. She sits up slowly, pausing a moment to let the universe stop spinning, and checks her progress. She is not attached to monitors anymore, though there is still an IV in her arm. That probably accounts for the diminished throbbing in her skull. She is stiff and aches a good deal, but otherwise she feels much better than she did, and—oh.

The jumper, falling, pain and constant fear, blood and metal and a friend dying by degrees next to her. She looks across the infirmary. No other beds are occupied.

"Colonel?" she calls, her voice coming out cracked and dry. She swallows, but sleep and anxiety have dried up her throat, "John?"

"Teyla?"

A male-silhouette in the door raises her hopes for a split second before she recognises the voice, "Rodney?"

He hesitates for a moment before approaching her, his gait a little unsteady, like someone walking in a thick fog. She has seen this in him before and it turns her stomach to ice.

"What has happened?" she asks, as he reaches her, quickly, before her courage fails her.
But even now he pauses before replying, and at this distance the shadows cannot hide the grey hollows under his eyes, "Teyla," he says again, his voice trembling on a thin edge, clinging to her name for balance, "Teyla, they . . . "

"Yes?"

He flinches from the question, turning away from her. "Rodney," she tries again, holding onto the rails of her bed, "what—?"

"You should come," he speaks to the infirmary at large, his voice bereft of energy or expression. "Come and maybe you can . . ." he trails off, keeping his face turned away from her. "Just come, please?"

Rodney finds a wheelchair from somewhere and after she detaches her IV, he helps her into it. He is uncharacteristically gentle, and more disturbingly, silent, save for a sharp hiss when she falls into him. She feels the bulk of bandages under his jacket and realises they have none of them survived unscathed. She tries to ask how he is, but he shrugs off the question, just gripping the handles of her chair so hard his knuckles turn white. He pushes her through the main ward of the infirmary, to the smaller rooms at the back. The ride has made her dizzy again, and she cannot read the door signs, but she knows one of these is the medical lab, another is the ICU. And one is the morgue.

Rodney pushes open a door, and manoeuvres her through.

This room is almost dark, except for the blinking of computer screens. Rodney turns her chair around and backs her into the far wall. Finally still, her head begins to clear, and she can see.

She is in one of the isolation rooms. Ronon lies motionless on his pillows, the white scrubs strangely diminishing his size. His arm is in a cast to his shoulder, and part of his head has been shaved, making his face seem lopsided. He will not like that. He told her once that he had never let anyone cut his hair since he started running. He had never trusted anyone enough to let them get that close with a blade since the surgeon who tried to remove his wraith transmitter. Not until Doctor Beckett anyway.

A bandage covers the bald section of his head, and he is on a ventilator. "They had to operate," Rodney says suddenly, from the other side of Ronon's bed. "He something called an epidural hematoma. There was blood between his skull and the membrane around his brain? I know, you'd think his skull was too thick to get through but . . ." his voice fades out as he stares down at Ronon.

"I am sure Doctor Beckett has done his best," she offers, hollowly.

Rodney shakes his head, but does not look away from the man on the bed." I knew he was getting worse all the time we were down there," he continues as if she had not spoken, his voice carefully flat. "Most of the time he was out of it, but sometimes he woke up and he was just . . .so confused. Terrified even. He kept trying to stand up, but he couldn't even sit without heaving. I tried to keep him awake . . But I couldn't, whatever I tried. He just kept fading out, and waking up, until finally he didn't." her teammate frowns. "That was the worst part. He wouldn't even threaten me anymore. Just lay there. I thought he was going to . . . for a few minutes, I thought he had . . ." His hand absently smoothes the blanket near Ronon's hand, "Carson gives him a twenty percent chance. Twenty percent, can you believe it? All we did was crash a little. He didn't even fall down the cliff."

She wants to say something comforting. She should, because Rodney is her friend and he needs to hear something hopeful right now. But there is nothing she can say that he would believe. So in the end she just asks, "and Colonel Sheppard?"

He jumps, and glances sharply at her as though he had forgotten she was in the room. She thinks for a moment he does not understand her, but then he nods, and comes round the side of the bed. He turns her chair around, and pushes her out of the room, leaving Ronon to fight his grim battle alone.

The motion of the wheelchair is aggravating her headache, or else the medication is wearing off, and she is on the verge of asking Rodney to stop when he pushes her into another room. John is surrounded by much the same equipment as Ronon, but he lacks a scrub top, and blanket is hitched down, leaving part of his chest clear for the bandages. There are so many, turning his chest into a white mound of padding where the metal shard penetrated before. Her stomach twists and she has to take a deep breath to keep from heaving when she sees another set of bandages where she cut him. He too is on a ventilator, which at least assures her he is breathing. It seems so long since she could take that for granted.

Rodney wheels her right up to the bed, but she cannot quite bring herself to touch him. There are so many tubes and wires, she is afraid of disturbing something and inadvertently causing him harm. He looks so ill, his face a yellow-white shade under a shock of brown hair. The movement of his chest seems so slight, as if it could so easily stop all together.

"How is he?" she asks, not sure she wants a reply. Rodney is standing behind her chair, but she can practically hear him bit his lip before replying.

"Lorne said it took three hours to get him out . . . and he stopped breathing a couple of times. When they got back they took him straight to surgery . . . Carson won't tell me anything, just that we have to wait. He's still here, so that's a good sign, right?" his voice hovers over some dark point between grief and hope, and she can feel him begging her to agree, as if that would improve his chances.

She reaches out, and very, very gently interlaces his fingers with her own, being careful not to disturb the IV there. She can feel the thud of a pulse through her fingers, but she cannot be sure if it is hers or his.

There is a rustle behind her, and Rodney walks around to the other side of the bed, sitting down in the chair already there. He does not take John's hand, but grips the mattress tightly and stares at his face. And they wait with him, without speaking, without even looking at each other, until she finally succumbs to sleep again.$

Authors note: I whumped them extra well for you since it took so long? You would not believe how many times I rewrote this! Reviews for me are like IV juice is for Sheppard right now :) More suffering SGA to go ;)