A/N - Trigger warning for brief mentions of vomiting. This chapter kicks off the John whump!

Ronon was feeling pretty good. At least, he was feeling pretty drugged. The drugs had softened the pain, making him feel almost detached from his burned arm and chest. He'd felt this softness plenty of times before, especially since coming to Atlantis. It wasn't always a feeling that he welcomed, especially if he was being drugged and put in a bed instead of going on missions and saving his team. But with Sheppard as his "doctor," all of that would be different this time.

Ronon laughed to himself at Sheppard's attempt at doctoring, then shuddered as the noise bounced back to him off the empty Gateroom walls. He didn't really think about how huge the Gateroom was, not anymore, but with everyone offworld, it looked bigger, and lonelier. Even eerier than the darkened, vacant Gateroom was the thought that the rest of Atlantis stretched out around him, empty and abandoned.

Ronon shifted uncomfortably, his arm twinging dimly through the haze of pain. He suddenly felt very alone. It was like the Atlantis in his nightmares, the city completely empty after the mass exodus of its former inhabitants. Ronon was left alone, sprinting through the city, searching for his team and unsure if they'd left him behind willingly or not. He shivered again, wondering if a city this old had ghosts. It probably did.

He wondered if they liked Satedans.

"Hey, Ronon."

Ronon jumped, then growled as his arm cut through the drugs. John was lurking by the doorway of the Gateroom, looking as though he wasn't sure whether or not to come in.

"You okay?"

"Fine," Ronon said. "Didn't see you there, is all."

"Great. The drugs are working, then." John sauntered into the room, and Ronon would never admit it but he instantly felt better. The empty city looming over him was deeply unnerving, but only when he might be the only one left in it. If Sheppard was here, then his nightmares couldn't be coming true.

"I think we should sleep in here tonight," John mused.

Their potential sleeping arrangements hadn't even occurred to Ronon, but he was grateful for John's suggestion anyway - he couldn't picture himself sleeping well alone in his room, with the rest of Atlantis entirely empty. "Why?" he grunted.

"Checked out my room on the way back from the kitchen," John said. "All my stuff is pretty much soaking wet still. Not comfortable, and I don't think Zelenka has gotten the heat on yet. Which means that once the temperature drops it's going to be really not comfortable."

Ronon nodded - that all made sense, and a camp out in the Gateroom sounded much better to Ronon than a night alone in his soaking room. "Where's the food?" he asked. He was pretty sure John was supposed to come back with food.

"Eh, I ran into some problems," John said. "Zelenka's on it."

John busied himself setting up camp - wandering around until he found sleeping bags and a battery-powered space heater and some flashlights and some pillows. He was in and out of the Gateroom, but Ronon didn't mind - it felt different than being alone. Ronon knew what it was like to be alone alone; people hadn't exactly wandered in and out of his life when he'd been a Runner.

Ronon helped as much as he was able. He cleared a wide space in the center of the Gateroom of various debris, including a shocking amount of feathers and bird shit. He unrolled the sleeping bags, arranged the pillows, considered making a fire and decided against it.

By the time all that was done, Ronon could hear Zelenka's echoing footsteps approaching, and a minute later he appeared, holding a plate of meat and three sodas.

"They are not cold," Zelenka said sadly. "As the refrigerator has no power."

"Doesn't matter," John said. "Thanks."

"If we do not get the power on in the next few days, even the food from the freezer will not be safe to eat. Luckily, our food storage was depleted as our two week leave was so soon, and when everyone arrives back on Atlantis, they will bring food with them. But things will be more difficult until they arrive."

"We can stick to MREs if we need to," John said. "It's only a week."

Ronon grunted his agreement.

They settled down on the Gateroom stairs to eat. Even though the pigeons seemed to have mostly gone to sleep, John looked vaguely on edge, hunched over his food like he expected it to be stolen from under him by a pigeon at any second. A bit dubiously, he took a tentative bite of Zelenka's meal.

"Oh," John said sadly. "This is...really good."

Ronon had to agree, which was surprising - not at all what he had expected from the timid scientist. He'd automatically lumped all of the Atlantis eggheads in with Rodney, in other words completely useless at anything that wasn't a science problem. When John had told him that Zelenka was spearheading the dinner efforts, he'd silently resigned himself to going hungry for the night. But the meat was good, fully cooked but still tender. It was even better than what Ronon had eaten as a Runner. Apparently, Zelenka had added salt and pepper, which Ronon considered to be the height of luxury.

Ronon stuffed more meat into his mouth and nodded his agreement with John. Zelenka flushed and fiddled with his glasses, looking pleased.

"Yes, well, I spent much of my childhood without power. And then, when I was at University and was trying to save money, I was actually siphoning off much of my electricity and redirecting it to my experiments, and of course to my pigeons, so I became even more adept at cooking without the use of electricity."

Ronon wasn't sure if what Zelenka had just said sounded completely insane, or if that was just the drugs talking. He snuck a glance at Sheppard, who seemed to be just as confused.

"...Oh?" John finally said, cocking his head to the side slightly.

"Yes," Zelenka replied happily, and he seemed to want to leave it at that. John and Ronon exchanged another confused glance, and Ronon was returning to his meal when he caught John wincing and favoring his hand.

"What's wrong with your hand?" Ronon blurted, long experience with Sheppard teaching him that it was best to come right to the point, hopefully before he had a chance to make up some kind of half-truth.

"Nothing," John mumbled.

"He burned it," Zelenka supplied helpfully.

"In the fire?" Ronon asked, trying to think of when Sheppard might have had time to burn his hand.

The tips of John's ears turned red, and he carefully avoided Ronon's eyes.

"He was cooking," Zelenka said, and John's shoulders slumped. Ronon snickered. John's inability to cook was nothing short of infamous at this point, although Ronon had never seen much firsthand evidence. He'd assumed that it was exaggerated, although John's burned hand spoke to the contrary.

By the time they'd finished their meal, Ronon's burns were starting to hurt again. He didn't like taking painkillers unless he was explicitly forced to by someone else, especially when they were in such an unfamiliar situation, but burns hurt. Ronon was used to many kinds of pain, but not that, and he didn't think he would be able to fall asleep without painkillers. He popped a few pills as Zelenka and John started cleaning up, and thought about how strange it was to be on Atlantis without any doctors at all.

On their surfing trip, Ronon and John had made a campfire each night, and sat around it drinking beers and chatting. It had been warm, and there had been plenty of food, and there wasn't a single thing that Ronon had been worried about.

Ronon missed that. Even though they were all in the Gateroom together, the same way they would be if they were all on vacation, this wasn't very much like his vacation with John at all. He wished he could go back to that beach instead. Or maybe go both back to the beach and back in time - he didn't think the saltwater would feel very good on his burns.

But, as they all got ready for bed, Ronon figured that things could be worse. They were all together, and all relatively unharmed, and they didn't have everything they needed but they did have...some things. Things could certainly be better, but they could be worse too.

John thought his day so far had been going better than his day yesterday, but it was a close thing, and the bar was low. He was so exhausted he had a headache, and everything that could possibly be going wrong did in fact seem to be going wrong.

Granted, nothing nearly so bad as the huge fire had happened today, so that had to be something.

John frowned. Scratch that, it hadn't happened yet.

John had woken with the sun. Not because of the sun, mind you - John was off-world too much to be picky about light when he slept. What had woken John was the sound. The sound of approximately 500 pigeons realizing that it was morning and screaming.

John, Zelenka, and Ronon had all woken up in a start. Somehow, the pigeon population seemed to have about doubled overnight. John wondered if they were breeding.

"I think our priority today should be figuring out what's going on with the pigeons," John had said at breakfast, picking a feather out of his coffee.

Zelenka had reminded John that their priority should perhaps be fixing the water filtration system, but John had sent Ronon off to investigate the pigeons anyways. It wasn't like Ronon could help them fix systems.

As it turned out, when Zelenka had said that he needed John's help to fix said systems, what he really meant was that he needed John's ATA gene. John always forgot that Zelenka had taken the gene therapy unsuccessfully, usually because Rodney's had been successful and he could presumably turn things on for the other scientist. Now, with the skeleton staff of Ronon, Zelenka, and himself, John was the only person in the entirety of Atlantis who had the capacity to get the city working. So far, this had involved him sprinting from one end of the city to the other, with Zelenka yelling in his ear for him to "go faster."

Soon enough, John had added dehydration to the list of reasons that he was fighting a headache. He didn't ordinarily think too much about his water consumption, he just drank when he was thirsty, did his best to keep hydrated, and if he didn't, a migraine would damn sure remind him. It wasn't usually a problem. Still, usually he didn't spend all day running around Atlantis on water rations that were essentially nonexistent.

John was on a break from Zelenka duty (which meant that instead of running around the city, he was clearing rubble from the Gateroom) when he heard his first update from Ronon.

"Sheppard." In the background of the comm call was the gentle sound of fluttering wings.

"Ronon. Did you-"

"I found where the pigeons are comin' from," Ronon said grimly, and John heard a loud squawk. He briefly wondered what Ronon had done to elicit that noise - punch the pigeon? Try to eat it? Just look at it wrong? - and then decided that he didn't really want to travel down that rabbit hole.

"Where?" John asked.

"I'm coming back now, I can just tell both of you. Did you get the power on yet?"

"Do you see lights anywhere?" John snapped, then sighed. "Sorry, buddy. Didn't mean to yell at you. No, we didn't get the power on. Or the water fixed. Or find any food."

"At least I found the pigeons."

John sat down on top of his pile of rubble and was immediately beset by five pigeons, who seemed to think that his hair might be food. He waved them away half-heartedly. "Yeah. At least there's that."

"I'm going to try to get rid of them."

John brightened at that. He had no idea at all how Ronon would be able to accomplish that, and he had a suspicion it wouldn't be possible. But even if Ronon couldn't eliminate the pigeons, maybe he could do something to reduce them, and hopefully get them all some food in the process. Even the idea of having slightly fewer pigeons screaming in the Gateroom in the morning made John feel slightly more optimistic about this whole situation.

"Great idea!" John said, beginning to clean the rubble with renewed vigor. He swatted at a pigeon that got too close to him, and hoped that Ronon figured out some way to eradicate them. If that happened, things really would be looking up.

Unfortunately, that conversation with Ronon turned out to be the high point of John's day. About ten minutes later, he was called away by Zelenka again, and spent the next hour running around Atlantis tinkering with various systems.

As John tried to obey Zelenka's panicked, half-English, half-Czech instructions, he fought back an unexpectedly powerful wave of missing Rodney. Rodney had both science smarts and the ATA gene, and he could probably accomplish what John and Zelenka had so far failed to do in about ten seconds flat.

By the time John arrived back at the Gateroom, he was sweaty, exhausted, and disheartened. He had been hoping to find the Gateroom miraculously empty of pigeons, thanks to...whatever it was Ronon had managed to do, but instead, he found Ronon standing defeated in the center of the room, completely surrounded by what seemed somehow like even more pigeons than before.

"I tried to kill some of them," Ronon said with a shrug. "But it didn't really do much."

John frowned. "I think you made them multiply."

"Yeah," Ronon said sadly. "I think I may have driven some of the last ones out of hiding. Thought all the pigeons had come up here to escape the fire, but it turns out there's still a...roost down there."

"How many?" John asked worriedly.

"I dunno. A ton. We're going to need a new plan."

John hoped Zelenka might at least come up with some solution to get the power back on, but about an hour or two after John, he arrived back at the Gateroom too, looking defeated. Upon seeing the pigeons, he swore briefly in Czech, then shook his head.

"Even for me, this is too many pigeons. And I did not get the power back on."

"That's okay," John said miserably, kicking at a piece of meteor. "I didn't get Atlantis cleaned up."

"And I didn't get rid of the pigeons," Ronon volunteered.

"So in summary, we were all useless," Zelenka said matter-of-factly. "I think that the meat is likely now expired, but I can find some MREs. Would anyone like one?"

All day, John had been thinking about how hungry he was, but now he found that the combination of the pigeons and the lack of power were enough to ruin his appetite completely. Even the mere thought of finding yet another feather in his food, combined with the stress of his imminent firing, were making him reluctant to eat.

"I think I'm just gonna get some sleep," John said, curling up on his sleeping bag and stifling a groan as his aching muscles protested. He heard Ronon rumble his agreement, and then he was asleep.

John stayed that way until the middle of the night, when his sleep-clogged brain vaguely registered something soft brushing against his hand. John yawned, still half-asleep, and opened his eyes.

The biggest tarantula he'd ever seen was crouched on top of his hand - thick, flexible legs bent, many eyes glittering. It was at least as big as his head, and its silky body was rubbing gently against his hand. For a moment, they were both frozen, staring at each other, and John felt his heart nearly beating out of control. And then, one of its stubby legs brushed John's palm, and all hell broke loose.

Ronon awoke to an earsplitting scream. He shot awake, glancing frantically around to find the owner of the scream, only to hear a yelp, and then the sharp retort of a nine mil firing over and over. Sheppard was on his feet, swaying slightly, clutching his pistol in his right hand while his left hand hung bleeding by his side. At his feet lay the smoking remains of something that Ronon made out to be the biggest spider he had ever seen, almost the same size as the meteor that had crashed into the Gateroom.

"John?"

The pistol clattered to the floor, and Ronon noticed that John was beginning to get very pale. Right as the pilot's eyes began to flutter, Rnon caught him and lowered him to the ground.

"Did it bite you?" Ronon demanded.

John's mouth opened, but no words came out. He looked as scared as Ronon had ever seen him, but he didn't' answer. Ronon grabbed his bloody wrist, managing to locate two gigantic puncture wounds beneath the blood.

Ronon had been bitten by a spider once when he was a Runner. Ronon glanced at the smoking, mostly destroyed body of the spider that John had shot - he didn't think it was the exact same kind that had got Ronon. John's looked bigger. But still, Ronon had survived his spider bite, even when the odds were against him, and he was pretty sure he had a chance at keeping John alive too.

In Pegasus, most all spiders that bit were venomous. Granted, most spiders, even the venomous ones, didn't tend to bite. But John had probably scared this one by screaming, not that Ronon could really blame him. And even though John theoretically could have collapsed from the sudden shock of it all, Ronon thought that much more likely the wound was poisoned. Ronon was going to assume that it was - if he guessed that it was and it wasn't, John would probably be okay, but if he guessed it wasn't and it was, John would almost certainly die.

Ronon pulled out his knife.

"What are you doing?" Zelenka gasped - all the commotion had apparently woken him up. "Ronon, stop!"

"I have to get the poison out of him," Ronon said. "Do you see a doctor around? This is the only way."

John whimpered and tugged at his hand, trying to pull it out of Ronon's grasp. He was far too weak. Ronon kept hold of him easily, and flipped his hand over so it was laying palm-up on the ground. He set the tip of his knife against the inside of John's pale wrist.

John whimpered again, and his hand twitched weakly.

"I'm sorry, buddy," Ronon said grimly. "This is the only way."

"Ronon-" Zelenka gasped.

Ronon ignored him. He opened a long cut down John's wrist, cutting right through the center of the two puncture wounds. Instantly, blood began to flow over John's hand and down the sides of his arm.

"That's too much blood," Zelenka said.

It wasn't, or at least, Ronon hoped it wasn't. John could survive losing quite a lot of blood, and Ronon knew the size that the puddle on the ground would have to be to mean there was no coming back. But with a tarantula that size, John's body could only process trace amounts of the venom. Anymore than that would be a death sentence. He had to get most of it out.

Ronon remained absolutely sure that he was doing the right thing, right up until Sheppard's eyes started fluttering again, then closed completely. Ronon grabbed for his wrist, the one that wasn't covered in blood, found his pulse, lost it, found it again, and didn't like what he found. John's breathing was slow and shallow, his pulse rapid and thready, and he was getting paler by the second. Maybe it was too much blood.

"Shep?" Ronon said frantically, clamping one hand around John's gaping new wrist wound and shaking him with the other. "Shep, ya gotta wake up, come on…."

John obliged, moaning slightly as he opened his eyes. Beneath Ronon's fingers, John's wrist continued to pump blood across the floor into the growing puddle.

"You okay?" Ronon asked him, pulling him a little bit closer in order to get a better grip on John's wrist. Oh god, was he even breathing? Was he alive?

Luckily, John responded by moaning, then by curling forward and throwing up all over Ronon.

"Aww man," Ronon mumbled, but John's eyes were open and that was good enough for him. He'd take a little puke any day, as long as it meant he hadn't killed one of his best friends. He tightened his grip on John's wrist, pulling John into his lap and keeping him still as best he could.

"He's going to die," Zelenka said, sounding halfway between worried and resigned, even as he was rushing across the Gateroom, offering Ronon a blanket bandage.

"NO," Ronon shouted, clamping down harder on John's wrist. "Come on, you're not gonna die, you can't die, please don't die…."

He was starting to think that he'd made a huge mistake. Maybe there was too much blood pooling on the floor, Sheppard was awfully skinny, maybe Ronon had miscalculated and now his friend would pay the price.

John whimpered again, and at this point Ronon was just thrilled that he was still alive.

"Hang in there, buddy," he told John, taking the proffered blanket from Zelenka's hands. Finally, the bleeding was starting to slow.

By the time the bleeding had finally stopped, John was unconscious again. He'd thrown up on Ronon again before his eyes closed, and now he seemed to be in some sort of shallow faint.

"We gotta stitch him up," Ronon said to Zelenka.

"Are you sure that the poison is gone?"

At the word 'poison,' John's eyelids twitched. "Sp-pider," he mumbled. "Big…."

"I know," Ronon said, hoping he sounded soothing. "Don't worry, we're taking care of it."

"Bit me," John whispered. He tried to pull his hand away, but he was far too weak, and even that slight movement made him immediately go paler than before. "Hurts."

"I know," Ronon repeated. He hoped the pain was from the cut he had opened down John's arm, and not from leftover traces of the venom from the spider. There was really no way to tell if he had gotten the poison out, unless John either recovered or up and died.

John twitched again in Ronon's arms. "My arm-"

"I know," Ronon said. "Do you still feel sick?"

"Sick," John murmured in agreement, and then his eyes slipped closed again.

Ronon looked up at Zelenka, who was watching the whole situation with wide, horrified eyes. "What do we do now?" Ronon asked. He was about at the end of his knowledge with his makeshift field medicine - he had gotten the poison out, and he had gotten the bleeding stopped. He knew they needed to stitch John up, but he wasn't exactly sure how to do that, at least, not how to do that in a way that Zelenka would approve of. Now came the part where he was going to need Zelenka to step in, and help him figure out what to do. He didn't really know how to make things sterile, or how drug interactions worked, or anything like that. He had a vague sense that on top of the stitches, John might need fluids, painkillers….

"Why are you looking at me?" Zelenka asked. "I do not know how to help him, and I was not the one who cut him open."

"You're a doctor," Ronon growled.

"Not that kind of doctor," Zelenka said. "And you know that."

"Come on, you must have-"

Zelenka frowned, and looked like he was ready to start arguing, but John chose that moment to moan and stir slightly, and Zelenka seemed to take pity on him.

"He needs to replenish his fluids. He has lost a lot of blood, and been vomiting on top of it. Have you ever heard of pedialyte?"

Ronon had heard of pedialyte - Carson and Jennifer had pushed it on him many times when he'd needed fluids but not quite at the level deserving of an IV. He liked it much better than coconut water, which was their other typical option. If John could keep it down, he'd be well on his way to getting rehydrated, and they wouldn't have to try to figure out how to set up an IV and possibly cause even more harm.

"Yeah, good idea," Ronon said. "Go get some. Get the stuff for stitches too. I'll stay with Sheppard."

Zelenka nodded and hurried off, and Ronon readjusted his grip on John's wrist. He didn't dare let go yet, not when Sheppard was lying in a pool of his own blood, the stuff clotting on his hair and clothes. Under his fingers, he felt the torn edges of John's flesh rubbing against each other, and his stomach plunged as he wondered yet again if he'd been too overzealous with the knifework. He probably could have effectively bled the wound without bleeding it quite this much….

John shifted in his arms again, muttering something to himself.

"What was that, Shep?" Ronon asked him, keeping ahold of John's wrist easily as John tried to tug at it.

"Spider gone?" John asked quietly, managing to open his eyes. They were dull and slightly unfocused, but they looked scared. He twitched again, as if trying to reach for his gun.

"It's gone. You killed it, buddy."

"Dead?" John whispered.

"Yep. Real fucking dead. I promise."

John didn't seem to hear him. His eyes drifted closed again, and Ronon was left alone with his unconscious friend, waiting for Zelenka.