A/N: Thanks for the reviews everyone! You're getting me all excited! And it's BBC Children in Need tonight!

rippleseditior, it was never my intention, but this fic sucked me in mercilessly as NenyaVilyaNenya (hi!) seems to understand, and hey, I wonder what might happen…

Chapter Five

Almost as quickly as it had arrived, the landslide was over, leaving a deep, wide gash running down the mountainside. McKay could now see Jinto and Wex clinging to roots half way down the chasm, some feet below him. Mud, debris and water continued to flow down the gash. He could see their faces, filthy and scared.

"Jinto! Wex!" McKay called down, not shouting, almost crying. Their eyes on his made up for their terrified silence.

"McKay! Are they OK?" Sheppard shouted over the noise of the water. He had a fairly good view of the situation from his side, and it didn't look that great.

McKay's face spoke a thousand words, most of which were 'no'. It was a very deep chasm that had been torn in the side of the hill, the gushing muddy torrent far below filled with branches and rocks. The sides of the chasm were not quite vertical, but almost. The boys seemed stable enough where they were, but there was no telling how long the roots would hold, or their footholds remain firm. Sheppard was helplessly too far away, with nothing to bridge the gap.

The Colonel rubbed the rain off his face roughly, and tried a more direct approach. "Do you think you can get down there?"

The sheer terror in McKay's face was unparalleled. "You're kidding me, right?"

By now, Sheppard was on his knees on the other side of the chasm. He looked down to where the boys clung to the wall. "Jinto!" he shouted, "Can you climb up to Dr McKay?"

He watched Jinto and Wex cast their eyes around, barely able to take their gaze from the rushing water below. Jinto sobbed, "I don't know, Colonel Sheppard. We...we can try."

Jinto let go his right arm from the root he was holding onto, and grasped at another root a little higher up. He brought a foot up to follow, scrabbling at the jutting rocks in the muddy earth for purchase. In another long moment, he was clinging on a little higher up than Wex. The effort of it seemed overwhelming, and he just hung on where he now was.

Sheppard looked at McKay, "I think you need to go down and be there for them. Can you…Will you go down?"

McKay's face was aghast as he shouted back. "You want me to die too?" It brought a whimper and a sob from below him.

The Colonel licked his dry lips. "C'mon, McKay. I have it on good authority this would be the way you want to go."

McKay froze for a moment. "Oh, yeah? You think I really want to die saving children? Maybe not so soon!" McKay shifted on his stomach, looking intently at the walls of the chasm.

"Look on the bright side! If you don't make it, you'll have your wish." Sheppard had been told of how McKay wanted to be remembered, had he been killed by the nanovirus some months ago. He wanted his sister to be told he'd died saving children. Of course, he hadn't been killed after all.

"It wasn't my wish! It was just a hypothetical fabrication! Who told you? Zelenka? I'm gonna kill him!"

"It was Ford."

"Oh. Well, when we rescue him, I'm gonna kill him."

Sheppard smiled wryly at the thought that McKay was thinking in terms of 'when' and 'rescue', particularly in relation to Ford. Both would have been anomalous to the man a year ago. The rest of it, well, he figured they'd better get today over with first.

Sheppard, too had been studying the chasm walls, and made a conclusion. "You can do it, McKay."

McKay wasn't quite certain. He called down, "Hang on, guys. We'll work something out, OK?"

Wex gripped tighter onto the root, and looking up into the face of the man, whispered, "Help us, please…Rodney."

TBC soon