Chapter Six: Hostile Country
Sheppard and Teyla poked around the temple and found nothing interesting -- it appeared that everything not nailed down had been taken when the town's residents had left, and everything else was covered with a thick layer of gritty dust. Sheppard noticed a couple of times that Teyla appeared nervous; she kept glancing in the direction that McKay and Ronon had gone, and once he caught her surreptitiously trying to sneak a peek at his watch. He couldn't really blame her for being nervous about their teammates' well-being -- it was an unfamiliar planet, after all, and the continued silence was eerie -- but he hoped that there wasn't anything she knew about the world that the rest of them didn't, something which might give her cause for extra concern. He was jumpy, too. Teyla had said that this planet was deserted, but he could swear he felt as if he was being watched.
He was hunting for words as the two of them emerged into the wan sunlight -- because something just didn't feel right, something was off about this whole mission. Something about Teyla, the way she didn't quite seem to meet his eyes ... just, something ... wrong. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Words ... he could never do much with words.
And that was when the shooting started.
Sheppard, stepping down from the last step of the temple stairs, nearly lost his balance and scrambled to catch himself. The P-90 was in his hands before both his feet were on the ground. He knew that sound, knew it all too well.
Afghanistan. He was back in freakin' Afghanistan. And for a moment, the disorientation was so great that he half-expected to turn and see Mitch grinning that familiar sly grin, see Dex at his side covering his back ... standing in the cold sunlight, in a courtyard drifted with dry snow and sand, just like a dozen empty little towns they'd gone through on patrol, so many times.
"Colonel!"
Teyla's voice snapped him out of it. She'd started running, her own rifle drawn, and he cursed himself for his hesitation -- a few seconds, but sometimes that made all the difference. As he caught up with her, Sheppard hit his headset. "Ronon! McKay! Come in, dammit!"
No answer, only static. He cursed softly.
"Colonel!" Teyla beckoned. "It appears to be coming from outside the town. There is a temple on top of the ridge in that direction; perhaps Dr. McKay was looking for Ancestors' technology in it, as we were."
The shooting had stopped, trailing off in a rumble ... an explosion? It sounded like no ordinance that Sheppard was familiar with. As he followed Teyla, running side by side through the winding streets of the deserted town, he ran his mind back to what he'd heard, as in so many other combat situations, trying to build a picture in his mind of what had happened from the few fragments that he'd gathered.
Ronon had shot first -- or, at least, if there'd been other gunfire, it had been of such a small caliber that it hadn't carried into the town. The first sound he'd heard had been the unforgettable thunder of the runner's gun. After that --some kind of single-shot rifle, and what was probably a shotgun. Three or four shots each, which probably meant at least five or six shooters, because there had been little time to reload and the shots sounded like relatively primitive firearms, probably lacking large magazines. That would rule out the Genii, too ... not to mention the Wraith ... but it left them right back at square one.
Teyla ran swiftly, easily, and so fast that the hounds of Hell might have been on her heels. Sheppard could barely keep up with her.
"Teyla," he panted, drawing abreast with an extra burst of energy. "I thought you said the planet was deserted?"
"I thought it was." She glanced at him, but he saw worlds of anguish in that look, her usual barriers stripped away to leave the brown eyes bare and hurting. "I thought that nothing had lived beneath these skies for many years. Colonel, I am afraid that I have been a fool. I have made terrible mistakes."
"Not your fault," Sheppard retorted, between breaths. "Don't talk. Run."
She looked as if she wanted to say more, but nodded and put on another burst of speed. Sheppard immediately violated his own order by trying again to raise Ronon and McKay on the radio. Still no response.
At the edge of the town, Teyla and Sheppard each flattened themselves behind one of the last buildings before streets and cobblestones gave way to rocks and twisted, dead-looking bushes. No cover, Sheppard thought in frustration; Afghanistan, again. Above the hill, a cloud of -- dust? smoke? drifted against the alien sky, and from their position, a narrow path wended its way up the hill, more or less towards the smoke. Teyla pointed to the path, raised two fingers and murmured, "Tracks."
He'd take her word for it; just looked like rocks to him. "Rodney and Ronon?"
"Can't tell."
He drew a deep breath, looked up the hill. The cloud of smoke or dust or whatever was beginning to dissipate in the air. Aside from that, nothing moved, nothing appeared different; the landscape seemed just as deserted as it had been when they first arrived on this world. But clearly, appearances could be deceiving.
Teyla was looking at him, awaiting directions. The thought occurred to him how much easier it was to deal with Teyla in a combat situation than Rodney. Despite her lack of formal training, she was one of the best soldiers he'd worked with. Often she seemed to anticipate his thoughts -- he hardly had to give her any directions. Like now ... he raised his eyebrows at her and jerked his head up the hill, she smiled faintly and nodded, and the two of them left the shelter of the buildings, each darting for a nearby boulder.
They worked their way up the hill under what cover they could find. Sheppard hated the slow pace, knowing that two of his team were missing and possibly injured with hostiles in the area. But he had a heavy disadvantage of ground -- the shooters were up the hill, presumably with an excellent view of the valley, and he supposed they were also much more familiar with the area. Getting shot on the way to the rescue would make for a lousy cavalry scene.
Every once in a while, he glanced over at Teyla. She kept pace with him easily, using her smaller size to good advantage to find cover where he would have been exposed. When she noticed him watching her, she gave him what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile, but it didn't make it to her eyes. Her eyes were ... haunted. He'd never quite seen that look on Teyla's face before.
Teyla, meanwhile, was stewing in a morass of guilt. She could not imagine how she had been so horribly wrong. The planet Cleta had been abandoned for years. Everyone on the trading planets knew it. No one came here anymore. And she had seen no signs of recent habitation in the town below. Certainly it was possible for someone to have moved in after the Cletans left, but if so, where could they be living? It didn't make sense to live in the hills in this harsh climate when there was a perfectly good town just waiting to --
Oh. The tunnels. Of course, how could she have been so blind. She had assumed that no one could find the cleverly hidden entrances to the tunnels, but surely there were other people like herself, trusted trading partners of the Cletans who had been shown their secret before they left their world. Maybe the secret was not so much of a secret after all. And she ... she had sent Ronon and Rodney straight into their arms.
For a moment guilt so overwhelmed her that she had to stop moving. Sheppard gave her a worried glance; she tried to smile at him, but from the look on his face, the smile hadn't done much to reassure him. Focus, Teyla, she thought; focus. It wouldn't help their teammates if she and the Colonel were shot to death on this barren hillside.
As they resumed moving up the hill, Teyla realized that she had overlooked one thing: if people were living on this world, especially if they were living in the tunnels, what were they living on? Did they resupply themselves through the Stargate, and if so, how had they kept their existence a secret? Surely their food and other supplies had to come from somewhere. A small group of people might be able to hide without a trace in the tunnels, but surely they could not hide their grazing animals and crops -- assuming that crops could even still be grown on this world. She frowned. She was missing something here; she knew it.
Perhaps they had been followed through the Stargate by one of their enemies? But in this quiet world, they should have heard a gate activation if one had occurred after they'd come through.
She heard a sharp intake of breath from Sheppard, and snapped her gaze forward, again cursing herself for allowing her attention to be distracted inward at a time when she needed all her wits about her. Then she saw what he had seen -- and the ground seemed to jerk sideways under her feet, so great was her shock.
Oh, sweet Ancestors.
They'd come to the top of the ridge ... or what was left of it. Teyla stared in shock and horror at the gaping hole in the hilltop. The path led up to it and then vanished in the cracked and broken stone. There was no chance that this could not be recent; dust billowed up from the depths.
Teyla couldn't breathe. What had she done?
"McKay! Ronon!" Sheppard tried his radio, and then tried peering over the edge and hollering into the darkness beneath. He looked up at Teyla, but she could not meet his eyes, too frightened that he would see the guilt and terror lurking in them.
"That temple of yours ..." Sheppard said.
"Was here, yes. Upon this spot." Teyla's voice shook slightly. She approached the edge with great care, cautiously peering over as far as she could see. Clouds of dust obscured the bottom of the hole, but it looked as if it went a long way down. The sides were very unstable, little mini-avalanches of pebbles and rocks sliding loose at the slightest vibration.
"Think they're down there?"
"I -- I do not know." Her voice sounded faint and thin to her own ears. She still could not believe, could not understand. When she'd been on the world before, the entrance to the catacombs had been opened easily upon this very spot by their host, who wanted to show them the tunnels that the people of this world used to hide from Wraith attacks and other enemies. It had been a sign of great trust, indicating that their peoples were to be forever allies. She was not aware of any booby traps. And the people of this world had not left because of enemies; they had left because their world became no longer capable of supporting them. They would not have had any reason to leave traps ...
But clearly, this world had changed since she had been here. The evidence lay before her. And, trusting fool that she was, she had led -- no, manipulated her friends into a trap.
Sheppard had approached the edge of the hole so closely that she could see the ground start to fracture under his feet. Teyla tensed, ready to grab for him should he start to fall. He was leaning out as far as he dared, waving the life signs detector over the gap in the earth.
"I'm getting life signs," he said, and Teyla let out a long breath. "But there's so much static I can't tell how many. Could be one, could be a dozen. No way to know if it's Ronon and McKay." He frowned at the screen. "I'm getting some readings up here, too."
Teyla tensed, spun around with the P-90 and swung it slowly back and forth over the rocks. "Where?"
"I can't tell!" Frustration overwhelmed him; he smacked the scanner, stared at it again, sighed. "Maybe Rodney could make sense of this, but I can't. I just know we're not alone up here."
The two of them stared around them at the still, apparently deserted landscape. The wind keened in the rocks, and an occasional shower of destabilized pebbles cascaded into the hole, making Teyla flinch.
"Hey!" Sheppard bellowed at the landscape around them, and she jumped, her finger jerking on the trigger of the P-90; she barely managed to stop herself from peppering the nearest boulder with valuable ammunition. "I don't know who's up there, and I don't care! From what I heard earlier, we've got vastly better weapons than you do, and all we want is to take our people and go home. Help us or leave us alone, but either way, we're taking them and getting out of here. Get in our way and we'll kill you. Got it?"
"Colonel, perhaps I should handle the negotiating," Teyla offered.
"I'm not negotiating. I'm giving warning. Those bastards, whoever they are, tried to kill two members of my team."
Sickness rose in her throat, choking her. "You are very sure that they are still alive," she said, trying to keep her voice stable.
"No blood." Sheppard gestured around them with the P-90. "If Rodney and Ronon were up here, they were either taken prisoner without being shot, or they're down in that hole. Either way, there's something to rescue."
"True," she conceded.
Sheppard drew a deep breath and shouted at the rocks, "You guys getting this? We're armed and very dangerous. Shoot at us, and we'll kill some of you. Now, we're taking our people and going home."
With that, he muttered, "Cover me," and slung the P-90 over his shoulder. Teyla cast an incredulous look over her shoulder as he approached the edge of the hole.
"Colonel, what are you doing?"
"Climbing," he said, and stared down into the pit. "Damn it, wish I'd thought to bring rope! We haven't got time to go back to the Stargate -- it's a half-hour's jog at least, both ways, plus who knows how much time to get a rescue team together on the other side, and God knows if they're hurt down there." He studied the unstable sides of the hole, reached out a cautious toe and prodded at it, dislodging a cascade of sand and pebbles that vanished into the depths. "Maybe I could slide down, like on a sledding hill. Yeah. It's the only way. Gonna be a long damn way down..." He drew a deep breath, turned around and prepared to throw a leg over the edge of the hole, as Teyla stared in horror.
"Colonel! Wait!" One leap and she was at his side, releasing her trigger hand to seize his wrist. "Do not," she begged. "There may be another way. A better way."
"You got a plan? Let's hear it. And quick."
Teyla drew a deep breath. The time for dissembling was through. She'd promised Weir that if things started to turn bad, she'd give up the plan, and having two of their team members vanish in an avalanche of rocks while being shot at by unknown enemies definitely qualified as "bad" in anyone's lexicon. "There are tunnels under the town," she said. "This was one of the entrances. I know several other ways in. In the tunnels, we should be able to find our way back here much more safely and almost as quickly as we could climb down."
Both Sheppard's eyebrows raised nearly to his disheveled hairline. "Tunnels? Like, catacombs?"
"I do not know that word. The people of this world used them to shelter from the Wraith when the culling ships came. They are well hidden, and very extensive and deep."
Sheppard pulled his arm free of her grasp. "And you just now thought to mention this? Damn it, Teyla! Those energy readings of Rodney's must be coming from those tunnels of yours. If you'd just said something back in the village, Rodney and Ronon could've taken your safe way in, and they wouldn't be down in that hole right now."
Oh, he didn't know the half of it. "There is more," Teyla said, very quietly. "I do not think you will like this. You may give me whatever punishment you feel I deserve, for I am sure I have earned it."
"Punishment? What is this crap? Teyla, you've never done anything to deserve punishment! I mean, you made a mistake, but --"
"I believe I have done more than make a mistake." Her eyes roved from the rocks, to the distant mountains and the toy-sized houses of the town below them -- anywhere but Sheppard or the hole in the ground that she assumed had swallowed her friends. "Colonel, whose idea was it to come to this world, do you recall?"
"Damn it, is that what this is all about? You're blaming yourself because you suggested this world? That's just stupid, Teyla. We would have gotten here eventually in any case; you just sped up the process by suggesting we take a look at this place because you've been here before and you knew it might have Ancient tech."
"That is not why I wanted to come to this world," Teyla said, staring at the ground.
"Teyla." His voice was a bark of command. She risked a glance at him. "I don' t have time for games. Two of my team are down in that hole, maybe hurt, and every minute that goes by is a minute they could be bleeding to death or suffocating. We're standing here arguing in hostile country, which violates about fifteen of the rules that get drilled into you in basic training. If this is important, then tell it to me straight."
Teyla drew a deep breath. "I made sure that we came to this world because of a plan that I had devised ... well, Dr. Zelenka and myself had devised ... to repair the rift between yourself and Dr. McKay."
She risked another glance. He was staring at her. One hand moved to point at the hole. "You planned this?" His voice was low and dangerous.
"No!" she protested. "This was not part of my plan at all! I thought I had accounted for everything, but something has gone very wrong. I swear to you, I thought that there would be very little risk, or I would never have--"
Ka-click.
In a world with only natural sounds, the very man-made sound of a rifle bolt snapping into place seemed as loud as a gunshot.
------
The first thing Rodney noticed was that he wasn't dead. This surprised him.
He raised his head slowly, moving his arms and legs, testing for broken bones. There were some bruises and his legs were half-buried in sand, but all in all, he appeared to be remarkably intact.
Sand, he thought -- the sand had saved him. He'd been one of the last things to fall into the hole, and the cascade of sand that had carried him over the edge had also cushioned his landing.
He sat up slowly, waiting for a searing pain that did not come. Weren't really bad wounds supposed to not hurt? You'd just keep running on adrenaline and have no idea you were bleeding to death until you keeled over. The fact that he felt no pain probably meant that he was mortally injured somewhere. After a few frantic seconds of checking himself over with his hands and finding no injuries, reassured by the presence of all the usual limbs and most vitally, his all-important hands -- he decided that he wasn't going to die, and looked around.
High above him, sunlight shafted weakly through lingering clouds of dust, but it did not reach this far down; his surroundings were murky, a perpetual twilight. He could see boulders and broken columns jutting from the debris, and wondered again that he had survived. A rattling sound made him jump; he realized that small cascades of rocks were still falling from the rough edges of the giant hole they had made. Craning his head back, he tried to figure how far down they must be. Twenty meters? More?
With a sudden surge of guilt, he remembered that he hadn't been the only one to go over the edge. "Ronon?" he called, ashamed by the slight quaver in his voice.
Only silence answered him. Rodney shook his legs free of the sand and stood up, testing his limbs. There was a very painful bruise on his right thigh, and he seemed to have banged his elbow. He dragged a hand through his hair, shaking free dirt and sand. He wondered what he looked like at the moment -- the living dead, probably.
"Ronon?"
He took a few steps forward, limping, and nearly twisted his ankle when a large rock slipped away under him and vanished into a suddenly yawning gap. Rodney froze, terrified that after surviving the fall he was going to fall into a hole in the rubble and break both his legs. He couldn't see. If only he could see!
A flashlight would come in handy.
Luckily, he realized, he had one. Kicking himself for being the dumbest genius ever, Rodney fished the small penlight out of one of the pockets of his vest and flipped it on. The beam cut a shaft through the dust-laden air. Just looking at all the dust made Rodney cough. Probably full of allergens and crap, too. The only good thing about being down here, as far as he could see, was that no one was shooting at them.
"Ronon?"
Something clattered somewhere in the twilit world ahead of him. Maybe another falling rock. Maybe someone moving. Rodney froze, crouched. He drew his 9mm and offered a quiet thanks to ... well, to science, since he didn't really believe in anything else, that he hadn't drawn the gun when the shooting began. If he'd had it in his hand when he'd fallen, then he would have lost it, just as he'd lost his scanner and Ronon's Stargate compass. He refused to consider the implications of that yet.
"Ronon?" he called softly, gun in hand, trying to make his voice sound deep and commanding rather than thin and scared. "Is that you?"
"S'me," rumbled a deep voice, and Rodney heaved a sigh and lowered the gun.
Behind one of the broken columns, he found the big man shifting rocks to unbury himself. The column, Rodney could see, had sheltered Ronon from the worst of it -- if not for that, the ceiling of the temple would have crushed him; it lay in pieces all around them. But Ronon didn't look good at all. His face was a mask of blood, and he carried his left arm curled against his chest.
"You okay?" Rodney asked.
Ronon glanced at him, apparently decided not to dignify the question with a response. He got to his feet stiffly, leaning on the column, and tilted his head back to look up at the sky far, far above them.
Rodney followed suit. "There's no way we can climb out of here, is there?" he said.
"Most likely not." And if Ronon was admitting that, then he must be hurting pretty bad.
Rodney raised his hand to his radio. No matter how he might feel about Sheppard and Teyla these days, or vice versa, he couldn't say he'd object to a little bit of cavalry showing up right about now. Before he could activate it, though, iron-hard fingers grabbed his hand, crushing the feeling out of it.
"Ow!" he snapped, snatching back his throbbing hand. "Dammit, Ronon, I need my fingers for my job!"
The runner glowered at him through bloody hair. "They could have radios, too."
"Radios capable of receiving Earth-style analog transmissions, tuned to our frequency? What are the odds of that, pray tell?"
"Not odds I want to take," the runner said. "Not if they think we died in that fall."
Reluctantly, Rodney lowered his hand. It was true ... they had no idea what sort of technology their mysterious enemies might possess, and right now they could use every little edge they could get. Besides, this far underground and considering all the interference in the atmosphere, the radios probably weren't capable of reaching the surface anyway.
"Well," he said, shaking his hand, "any sort of idea you might have ... I'd listen to it. I know you all think I'm a genius, and you're right, but at the moment I'm drawing a blank."
Ronon moved his good shoulder in a slight shrug. "Find the tunnels and leave."
Well, that was a plan. And Rodney couldn't think of anything better. Not waiting to see if Ronon followed, he turned and began climbing over rubble to get a better look at the walls of their prison. If the temple had once been an entrance to a system of tunnels, then perhaps it would still be possible to get into the tunnels from this point, assuming they hadn't been blocked or collapsed when the temple fell.
Fell. Buildings didn't just ... fall. Either the ancient mechanism that opened the entrance had gotten jammed, causing some sort of cataclysmic chain reaction of failures in the machinery, or their trigger-happy little buddies on the surface had set up a booby trap. He didn't have enough evidence to determine which was the cause, and that frustrated him. Sheppard would have laughed at his burning need to know; Sheppard would have said that it didn't matter why the temple had fallen, only that it had, and the important thing now was to figure out a way to get out of the hole.
But Sheppard wasn't here, and it annoyed Rodney to no end that he couldn't seem to stop thinking in terms of Sheppard this and Sheppard that.
Playing the flashlight up the ragged walls of the shaft, he soon located what he was looking for: a tunnel opening a few feet off what currently passed for the ground. There were others higher up, but this was the nearest, the only one they could possibly reach. He ran the flashlight around its edges and saw that it was nearly square -- clearly manmade and not natural.
Ronon joined him and looked up at the tunnel mouth, speculatively. Its floor was just above Rodney's eye level, but Ronon, being taller, could probably see in. "Does it look safe to you?" Rodney asked.
Ronon grunted. That might mean "yes"; it might also mean "I'm in pain" or "Could you please repeat yourself" or "Shut up" or about a dozen other things.
Sometimes, he really missed Ford.
"Think you can climb to it?"
Another grunt. Great, he was stuck in a pit with Og the Caveman. Rodney gave the runner a long, critical look, noticing his pallor and the blood matting his hair. "If you give me a hand up, I can help you up afterwards." Maybe. Ronon looked like he weighed a ton.
The runner didn't answer (saving his breath for more grunting, no doubt) but he bent his knees and lowered his good hand like a step. Rodney put a foot in it, and suddenly he was flying, propelled by a great boost from below. He sprawled across the lip of the tunnel, gasping, and floundered for a moment with arms and legs flailing before he got his limbs under him and pulled himself the rest of the way into the tunnel. Somehow he managed not to let go of the flashlight through all this, though the beam danced wildly across the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.
Turning around, he winced to see how far down Ronon appeared to be. Rodney sighed and held out his hand. "C'mon up."
Ronon shook his head. "Stand back."
Bemused, Rodney backed up. Surely he wasn't going to try ... but there he went, taking a few steps backwards and then launching himself at the opening from a running start. Ronon's good hand smacked on the floor of the tunnel and his chest, with the bad arm held in front of it, landed hard on the tunnel's lip. A sharp hiss of breath escaped his teeth, and for a moment he just clung there, his forehead resting on the tunnel floor, shoulders rigid and legs dangling outside the tunnel. Rodney nerved himself and took a step forward to help drag the runner into the tunnel, but before he reached the other man, Ronon drew a deep breath and pulled himself all the way over the edge. He lay on the floor, breathing hard, then got to his knees and paused again.
"Are you ... er..." Okay? Clearly not. "Do you need a hand? You can, um, lean on me," he added, hoping that his utter reluctance didn't show in his voice.
Ronon raised his head a little, giving Rodney a look through his dreadlocks that appeared almost amused. He braced his good hand against his knee and hoisted himself to his feet, stood for a moment breathing hard, then produced his big gun from somewhere under his coat. How in the world, Rodney wondered, had he managed to keep hold of that when he fell? Presumably that was another thing that came of surviving as a runner for seven years -- never let go of your weapon.
"What does your psychic runner sense tell you about this hole?" Rodney asked him ... well aware that he sounded like a bit of a dick, but he really did mean it. "Anybody in here with us?"
"Can't tell," Ronon said, and after a pause he added, "Can't hear anybody. Doesn't mean nobody's there."
Great. Apparently it was that time again: time to take a deep breath, gird your loins (whatever the hell that meant), and sally boldly forth into danger. Rodney didn't do danger. Didn't like it, didn't want it. Too bad the Pegasus Galaxy hadn't gotten that memo. He sighed and raised the 9mm into what he seemed to recall was a combat-ready position. Noticing Ronon swaying beside him, he resigned himself to being the brawn as well as the brains of this particular partnership and -- gun in one hand, flashlight in the other -- he braced himself and pointed both down the tunnel. Unfortunately, this meant leaving his back uncovered; he tried to point the gun both ways at once, then realized that Ronon was watching him.
"Uh ... you cover the rear, okay?" he offered.
"Sure," Ronon said after a moment.
And so they moved on, deeper into the tunnel. It sloped gently downward, which Rodney considered a bad sign, but it wasn't as if they had much of a choice. He strained his ears for any sound other than their footsteps and the pounding of his own heart. The flashlight created ghostly shadows that danced on the walls and kept setting off his internal panic sensors.
"Man, this is creepy." He played the light over the ceiling, partly in search of a way out and partly just to assure himself that nothing alive was up there waiting to drop on their heads. "Is this place freaking you out, or is it just me?"
He didn't even get a grunt from Ronon this time. Apparently, it was just him. Rodney sighed. If he was choosing people with whom he'd want to be trapped in a cave-in , Ronon Dex wouldn't be at the top of the list. Actually ... come to think of it, who would he want to be trapped in a cave-in with? Definitely not Sheppard, not right now. Zelenka ... don't go there. Elizabeth ... oh God. Caldwell ... just shoot him now, please. Teyla? Maybe. Samantha Carter? Ah, much better.
He was distracted from this pleasant fantasy by a fork in the tunnel. Rodney ran his light over the two tunnels. One slanted up slightly; he chose that one, all other things being equal. Looking back to make sure Ronon was following, Rodney saw that the man's shoulders were hunched, his arm held tenderly to his chest. At least the bleeding from his scalp wound seemed to have stopped, though it left him looking like a refugee from a horror flick.
"How's your arm?" he asked.
"Broken," Ronon said shortly.
"Shouldn't we ... ah, set it or something?"
"You find a splint, you let me know."
Sarcasm, from Ronon? He must be in pain. "You want some aspirin?" Rodney asked.
"What is aspirin?"
"Er, a painkiller. Not very strong, doesn't mess up your mind. Just takes the edge off and keeps it from swelling."
After a silence, Ronon said, "I would appreciate that."
Even though Sheppard usually carried a first aid kit, Rodney made a point of never walking through the Stargate without some basic medical supplies tucked into his vest: aspirin, Band-Aids, antihistamines, Epi-pen in case of allergic reactions, snakebite kit because hey, you never knew. People who called it hypochondria had clearly never been in half the situations he found himself in on a daily basis. He poured a couple of aspirin into his palm -- then, taking in Ronon's size, added a few more and handed them over. Before putting the bottle away, he took a couple himself; as he walked, the bruise on his leg seemed to be working itself out a tad, but it still ached something awful. He washed down the pills with a swig of lukewarm water from his canteen.
Ronon dry-swallowed the handful of aspirin and leaned against the wall for a moment. "Look, are you sure we shouldn't, I don't know, clean it or wrap it or something?" Rodney asked.
The runner shook his head. "It's a clean break. No compounding. Had worse. I'll be fine."
He didn't look fine, but it wasn't as if you could wrestle down a man his size and hold him while applying first aid. Rodney was lousy at first aid anyway; he knew by heart the symptoms of everything from heart attacks to anaphylactic shock, but as far as actually making practical application of that knowledge, he was well aware that he tended to either panic and freeze up, or completely overdo it. Theoretically he knew CPR -- Sheppard had insisted on the whole team being certified -- but if he ever actually had to do it ... well, watching him work on the CPR dummy, Sheppard had commented that he'd probably break every bone in the hapless victim's chest and inflate them like a balloon.
Sheppard again! Aargh! He hadn't realized until the last few days how the man had become wrapped up in every aspect of his life. It seemed that he couldn't go anywhere on or off Atlantis without everything he saw triggering some memory of Sheppard. Here he was, trapped underground on an alien planet, and he couldn't turn around without stumbling over a memory. The 9mm gripped in his sweaty hand reminded him of long hours in the Atlantis's makeshift shooting range with Sheppard patiently (or, often, not so patiently) teaching him the gun's operation and drilling him until he could hit a target. The vest he wore -- even the damn vest made him think of Sheppard, because Sheppard was the one who had originally outfitted them for their offworld missions, and one of their first big arguments had been over the vest, with Rodney insisting that it was too hot and bulky, and Sheppard standing firm that no one on his team was going offworld without some form of light body armor.
But it hadn't been a real argument, had it? Not like today. On that other day, there had been a lot of yelling, and at the end Sheppard had got his way through sheer stubbornness, and then they went off to the mess hall to get something to eat, and that was the end of it.
Today ... today was different. The last few days had been different. Thinking about it twisted his stomach in knots.
He'd lived his life without paying much heed to other people. He craved recognition for his genius, of course; who wouldn't? But generally, what people thought about him ... it wasn't something he worried about, wasn't something to base a decision upon. But over the last year in Atlantis, something had been built, very slowly, one little piece at a time ... something he'd never thought he would experience. Family. Belonging. And, in typical McKay fashion, he'd simply charged forward in his usual rampaging, "bull in a china shop" sort of way, heedless of what he might break along the way, until finally he'd pushed too hard, shoved at something he shouldn't have touched, and brought the whole thing crashing down around his ears. And then, only then, did he have time to stop and think about what he'd had, and what he'd lost.
He liked these people, dammit. He wanted them to like him. The idea that they might not like him, might not trust him -- that Weir didn't, that Sheppard didn't -- it hurt in a deep, empty, lonely kind of way that he hadn't experienced since he was a small child, craving the affirmation from his parents that would never come.
It was easier to think about such things alone in the dark, without other people around him, their thoughts and emotions and damned feelings pushing at him. Well ... not really alone, of course. He glanced back at Ronon. The runner seemed to be walking a bit more easily after taking the aspirin, his eyes roving around the tunnel by the light of McKay's flashlight, never resting, never still.
There was something strangely peaceful about being around Ronon, Rodney thought -- strange, considering that the man lived his life by violence; but the comforting thing about Ronon was the sense of utter self-sufficiency that surrounded him like well-worn armor. Ronon didn't ask for anything from the people around him, didn't even want it. What McKay had always hated about interacting with other people was their sensitivity, the way you could hurt them with a casual, careless word -- and watching his words was something he'd never been able to remember to do. He used to have that comfort with Sheppard, the sense that no matter what he said, it didn't really matter; nothing could be so bad it would drive Sheppard away. Now that this had turned out to be false, he realized that he got the same feeling from Ronon, only more so. He had no idea if Ronon liked him or not -- and, he realized, it didn't really matter that much to him, not the way that Sheppard and Teyla's approval mattered to him -- but he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to change Ronon's opinion of him with a few thoughtless remarks.
For Rodney, that was about all you could hope for from other people -- and a lot more than you got from most.
Acceptance.
He wondered if he'd totally blown it with Sheppard. He also wondered if Sheppard and Teyla were looking for them. Had they heard the gunshots? Were they worried? Probably not worried about him, considering the terms on which they'd parted, but they would at least want to know what happened, wouldn't they? For that matter, he hoped they were okay. He knew from experience that they could both handle themselves in a firefight, but still ... once the bullets started flying, you only had to be slow or unlucky one time. Once was all it took.
A small, paranoid, dark part of his mind whispered to him: What if this is all actually still part of Teyla's plan? Could she actually have ... meant for this to happen to them? He couldn't believe that she would do such a thing, and yet ... you never really could know about people until they were under pressure, could you?
It just wasn't a good idea to trust people. Good things never came of it. He made himself a small promise to remember that, when he got out of this.
If he got out of this.
"Turn the light off," Ronon said suddenly.
Rodney jumped. "Why? Do you hear something? Are we being followed."
Ronon sighed. "Just ... turn it off. Think it's getting light in here."
"Really?" Rodney snapped off the flashlight. Pitch darkness rolled back in to swallow the walls of the tunnel, and he swallowed, fighting down claustrophobia. But, as his eyes began to adjust to the gloom, he began to make out details: Ronon's big shape next to him, his own hands.
Rodney turned to Ronon, starting to smile. Out ... they must be almost out! But the smile died as he realized that the light seemed to be coming from all around them. No ... above them. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. It was glowing, very faintly, in a series of small panels.
Rodney switched the light on and played it across the ceiling. The panels were not reflective and blended with the stones so thoroughly that he could see how he might have missed them before, but ... he snapped the flashlight off, then back on. No doubt about it. They were glowing very faintly.
"I'll be damned," Rodney said under his breath. "Ancient technology. I think." He looked around him at the too-square edges of the tunnels, perfectly smooth even after all the years it must have been here. "I think we're in some kind of ... Ancient bunker."
------
tbc...