As usual, thanks for the reviews ... wow, so MANY reviews! Thanks once again to Tazmy for beta-ing.

I've revised and re-uploaded the previous chapter. The changes are basically small things to make it more accurate with regards to canon and internal consistency, such as making it more clear that the healing device is attuned only to Rodney, and some changes to the scene in which Rodney gives Teyla the gate GDO.

Chapter Eleven: The Way Back

Teyla had no idea what to expect. She backed away, and Ronon with her.

But nothing spectacular happened. A bluish glow suffused the device on Rodney's hand, spreading up his arm and across Sheppard's chest like water. Rodney's body stiffened and arced as if an electric shock had gone through him ... and perhaps it had.

Cautiously, Teyla approached the two of them. Rodney was taut and shaking, his shoulders hunched, his head fallen forward and sweat matting his hair. She could see the strain he was under, and her fists clenched in sympathy.

But it was working. Sheppard's chalk-white face regained a hint of color; his breathing eased; the terrible wounds in his chest began to close and knit together.

Yet not fast enough, she saw. Not nearly fast enough.

McKay's face had gone grayish, with a blue tinge around his lips.

The device was killing him, as he had told her it might. And she could see that he had no intention of stopping. He meant to see this through -- to the end.

Teyla strode forward, two quick steps. She had promised she would not interfere. But she had also made a far older, far deeper promise: a promise of loyalty to her new team, her new people, her new family. She had come to this world to reunite two brothers; she would not stand here and watch one of them die to save the life of the other. The story was not supposed to end this way. No matter what vows she had made, she could not let it happen. She would pay the consequences later. She had to wait long enough, but not too long -- and she prayed to all the Ancestors that her timing was correct.

She tore the device from McKay's limp fingers. Clutched in her hand, it immediately went dark. Her eyes went quickly, fearfully, to Sheppard, but he continued to breathe, eyes closed.

A spasm went through McKay's body, and Teyla feared for one truly horrific instant that she had killed him by separating him from the device. But he was only trying to raise his head, holding himself up with trembling arms. He was so weak that he could barely do that. "You promised," he said in a faint, betrayed voice, and reached a shaking hand towards her. "Give it back. Not enough, not yet ..."

"It will kill you."

His eyes were wide, wet, pleading. "Doesn't matter," Rodney whispered. "He'll die if I don't. Can't stop halfway ... all this, for nothing ..."

Teyla knelt beside Sheppard, reached across and took Rodney's face in both her hands. "Rodney," she said quietly. "Look." And she directed his gaze to Sheppard -- to the raw slashes of the wounds beginning to knit together, the blood clotting along the edges; to Sheppard's chest rising and falling smoothly with deep, even breaths. "He will live, Rodney. Do you hear me?" She raised his face to hers, met the dazed-looking eyes. "You did it. He will live. You do not have to die to finish healing him. He can do that himself. He is still injured, but he is not dying. You have done enough."

For a long moment he just looked at her ... then down at Sheppard ... then back at her. And slowly the tired blue eyes came alive, and she saw a look in them that she had not seen since before Doranda, and very rarely even then -- a warm, unrestrained joy, as if for just that instant, the hidden beauty in the depths of his closely guarded soul had opened to her. "I did it," he whispered, and then the animation faded from his eyes and they rolled back in his head as he pitched forward, collapsing across Sheppard's torso.

------

There was pain and darkness ... not as much pain as he would have thought, considering that he was dying and all, but enough that he wasn't crazy about the idea of waking up anytime soon.

"Colonel. Colonel Sheppard." A woman's voice, tense and urgent. For a moment, drifting in the darkness, he couldn't quite place it. A hand touched his face -- hurried, yet soft. "Colonel. Wake up, please. We cannot carry you. You must wake up."

Sheppard felt, more than heard, a groan escape his lips. His lungs were wet, aching ... and yet, he could breathe freely. He opened his eyes, saw the ceiling and a dark blur that slowly resolved into Teyla's face. He coughed; she drew back. "Sorry," he said, and was surprised when the word emerged clearly. He took a deep, cautious breath, and with Teyla's help, eased himself upright. His clothes were sticky, clinging to his body uncomfortably. What the hell ...? Oh. Blood. Damn. And it all rushed back: fighting the Cletans and leaping after Teyla and getting shot and knowing that he was going to die, and ... and Rodney, somehow, Rodney very much alive and telling him that he could heal him and ...

"Where's Rodney?" he asked, as Teyla helped him stand up. His legs trembled under him, limp and shaky. He felt like hell, but at least he didn't feel that he was about to drop dead.

Teyla turned her head, and Sheppard followed her gaze. Rodney was crumpled against the wall in a heap with Ronon bending over him. Maybe it was just the flat, flickering lights that made him look so ghastly white, like a corpse. There was something terribly wrong about seeing him so still, with all the life gone out of his expressive hands and face.

"Is he all right?" Sheppard asked her. He wanted to go to him, but right now, keeping himself upright was all he could manage.

"No," Teyla said, and he heard the tenseness in her voice again. "He is very much not all right, and we need to get him, and you, back to Atlantis. Soon. Can you walk?"

Sheppard tested out a cautious step. His legs held him, at least for now. His chest felt weird, fragile, like a shattered piece of glass with every fragment leaning precariously in place, awaiting a puff of wind to send it all tumbling down.

"Teyla, what in the world happened?"

"This." She showed him an object in her hand. Sheppard reached for it, and he saw her hand jerk as if to pull it away, but she relinquished it reluctantly. He couldn't tell what it was, some Ancient doodad or other, but he remembered seeing it glowing on Rodney's hand. It stayed dark for him, but then, he wasn't trying to turn it on.

"What's this?"

"It's what he used to heal you," Teyla said. "A device of the Ancestors, a very dangerous one. Please do not try to use it," she added, her voice pleading. "He was perfectly healthy and it very nearly killed him. I had to take it away from him to make him stop using it. That is why you are not fully healed. I am sorry, but I did not feel I could do anything else."

"You did the right thing." Sheppard staggered against her as he tried to take another step, but it wasn't all from the weakness in his legs. "That idiot. Doesn't he know better than to try out some new gadget when he doesn't know what it ..." He trailed off, looking over at Rodney as Ronon levered the smaller man over his shoulder with his uninjured arm. He was remembering Rodney talking to him through the haze of pain, saying something about kamikaze pilots. "Teyla," he said in a somewhat different voice. When she looked at him, he asked, "Do you think he knew ... what it would do to him?"

She seemed to hesitate fractionally, then gave up. "Yes. He gave me this." She showed him Rodney's GDO. "He knew."

Sheppard stared at Rodney, hanging over Ronon's shoulder, and said nothing. He couldn't see Rodney's face. Couldn't even see if he was breathing. Teyla touched his arm.

"We should go," she said.

The corridor outside was deserted, the lights dim and flickering. "Don't tell me you two killed them all," Sheppard said, striving for a light tone past the lump in his throat.

"It is a rather long story." Teyla shifted her shoulder against him, adjusting to a better position for walking. "What it amounts to is that Dr. McKay saved our lives, and for now the Cletans appear to be keeping their side of the bargain, so we must go quickly while we can."

"I really need to hear this story."

Teyla gave him her side of it as they walked, Sheppard leaning heavily on her shoulder. There were still a number of things she didn't quite understand; the one person who knew the whole story was draped over Ronon's shoulder, and showed no signs of waking up anytime soon.

"How are you two, anyway?"

"We two?" Teyla questioned.

Sheppard jerked his head from Ronon to her. At her startled look, he grinned. "You know, I didn't get to be an Air Force Colonel by completely ignoring the people serving under me, you know. I can tell that something happened between the two of you. Are you working it out?"

Teyla looked over at Ronon. "I believe we are doing very well, Colonel." And quietly, she smiled.

------

They had left the well-lit tunnels, entering the dark ones. Teyla flicked on the light on their one P-90 and used it to illuminate their way. They climbed a short flight of stairs that did not look familiar -- Teyla tried not to notice how Sheppard's breathing grew harsher as they climbed -- and found themselves in a long straight tunnel sloping gently downwards.

"I really don't mean to criticize," Sheppard said, "but do we have any idea where we're going?"

Teyla drew a deep breath and released it. "Less than I might hope," she admitted at last.

"Shoulda got a map from the mole people back there."

"It was all we could do just to escape with our lives. I would not have wanted to push our luck any further."

"You guys did good," Sheppard told her after a moment. "Really. All of you."

He seemed to intend more, but broke off in a coughing fit. Teyla felt him leaning more heavily on her shoulder than before. She turned her head to see him raise a hand to wipe his mouth, and glimpsed a dark streak of blood on the back of his hand. Her stomach clenched.

It clenched further at the tightness in Ronon's voice when he called quietly, "I believe we should stop for a rest."

"Rest sounds good." Sheppard sounded as if he was striving for a light tone, but he ruined the effect by coughing again. As she eased him to the floor, Teyla felt wetness against her arm and drew it back to see that her uniform sleeve was spotted with fresh blood, glistening darkly in the P-90's uncertain light.

"You are bleeding again," she said, turning to help Ronon lower McKay's limp form to the floor beside Sheppard.

Sheppard dismissed that with a wave of his hand -- a rather McKay-like gesture, Teyla could not help noticing. "He doesn't look good," he said, studying the unconscious scientist.

Teyla had to agree with him. McKay did not look good at all. His skin was waxen, his eyes sunken in dark rings. She could see from his cracked lips that at least part of his problem was dehydration, and unstrapped Rodney's half-empty canteen from his hip, she tried to get him to drink. The water simply dripped on his mouth and she ceased for fear of choking him. Frustrated, she handed the canteen to Sheppard, who took a couple of swallows before ending up in a coughing fit. Teyla took the canteen away and then supported him until he could draw breath again. To her surprise, he was grinning when he raised his head and looked from her, to McKay and Ronon, finally down to his own bloody chest.

"We're a wonderful bunch of heroes, aren't we?" he said, and laughed until he coughed again.

"Please, stop it," Teyla begged. When he could sit on his own, she laid down the P-90 and turned to ostensibly adjust the wrappings on Ronon's arm, in the process drawing the runner a few steps away from the others. Tugging at his cast, trying to look busy, she murmured, "They are not doing well at all."

"I cannot continue to carry Dr. McKay," Ronon said quietly. "It will kill him ... the movement. He had grown much worse since we have been walking."

Teyla nodded. "Nor can the Colonel continue exerting himself, even with my help. His wounds are beginning to break open. If he continues, he will undo everything that Rodney did for him. They will both die for nothing."

The two of them, runner and warrior, stood in the dimness of the tunnel and looked back at their Earth teammates. Sheppard was slumped against the wall next to McKay's still form; he seemed asleep. In fact, Teyla thought for a moment that he was asleep, until she saw that his hand was resting lightly on McKay's, and the fingers were moving, gently chafing the limp, still hand.

"If we leave McKay behind, I could carry Sheppard," Ronon said.

Teyla looked up at him. She could not read his face. She knew that Ronon was intensely, personally loyal to Sheppard, only slightly less so to her ... but she did not know how he felt about McKay. In a perfectly cold, rational universe, that would be the thing to do: save the less injured person, come back for the more injured when time permitted.

But Teyla did not occupy such a universe, and neither, she suspected, did Sheppard. And somewhere deep down, she didn't believe that Ronon did either.

"Sheppard will not allow that," she said softly.

Ronon's breath hissed out as if he'd been struck. "If the alternative is both their deaths..."

"The result," Teyla said firmly, "would still be the same, I assure you of that. Carrying McKay might kill him. Leaving him here would kill the Colonel."

Silence descended upon them. Teyla met Ronon's eyes, saw that her decision was also his. No words needed to pass between them. She turned back to see that Sheppard's eyes were open again, watching her. He smiled slightly as she dropped down to her haunches in front of him. Teyla had opened her mouth to speak, but Sheppard beat her to it.

"You two are going to have to scout ahead," he said. "No way we can all get out of here in time for McKay. I can see that."

Teyla frowned and brushed her tangled hair from her face. "I was going to say that one of us should go search for the exit, Colonel. We cannot leave the two of you undefended, not with your injuries so severe."

Sheppard was already shaking his head. "And send one of you on alone? Not a chance. If you have to fight, if you have to climb something, if you come to a junction in the tunnels and have to explore two ways at once -- no, I'm not pinning all our hopes on one person at this point in the game. Rodney claims that two heads aren't better than one" -- and his eyes flickered to the scientist with a mixture of exasperation and challenge, as if daring McKay to wake up and defend himself -- "but it's true. I don't know if one of you can find the way out. Two of you have a much better chance." When Teyla opened her mouth again, he said, "Damn it, that's an order."

Swallowing anger, knowing he was right, Teyla picked up the P-90 and pressed it into his arms. "You will keep this, then. We have Ronon's gun."

"Yeah, but you don't have a light."

Ronon spoke up. "Dr. McKay had a flashlight earlier."

Teyla raised her eyebrows and bent over McKay, digging though his pockets with a guilty sense of violating his personal space. She quickly found a small light and flicked it on and off. "Are you happy now? We have light. And surely you must agree that you cannot be left here defenseless, so do not argue about keeping the gun."

Now it was his turn to open and close his mouth, yielding the point with a show of irritation. "You've clearly been spending too much time around me and Rodney, Teyla. You used to be so nice."

Teyla felt her lips quirk up. "We shall return swiftly, Colonel."

"You shall return carefully," Sheppard retorted. "And keep your eyes open."

"We will." She looked down at the two men, both of them alive and breathing and, she hoped, likely to stay that way for quite some time. Less than an hour ago, she had thought that she would never see either of them again. Leaving them now was like tearing away a piece of herself.

"I believe you are right, Colonel," she said, and at his quizzical, eyebrow-raised expression, "I think that I have been spending too much time in the company of yourself and Dr. McKay. Once, I was highly trained in the ways of speaking. I could think of words to cover all situations, and this, indeed, was my life as a negotiator." She folded her arms, trying to look stern. "These days, I find that all too often, I discover myself in situations for which I cannot find the words."

Sheppard smiled at her, an unexpectedly gentle smile. "Some things, there just aren't words for, Teyla."

"Indeed." The moment stretched out, and she knew she should have been gone already. Turning to Ronon, she found the runner already in motion -- but as the two of them turned to go, it was Ronon who stopped and turned back.

"Hey, Sheppard!" One of the runner's hands flickered, and Sheppard flinched from the knife suddenly quivering in the floor by his boot.

Sheppard snorted and reached to pull it out of the crack in the stone where it had embedded itself. "Jeez, warn a guy next time?"

"In case the gun is not enough." He raised his hand to them both.

Teyla thought that she would be brave enough not to look back. And, all down that long corridor, she managed to be that brave. But at the end, just before she turned the corner, she did look over her shoulder. By that time they were so far away that all she could see was a distant, lonely light, quickly swallowed by darkness as they went around the bend and moved away.

If the Ancestors were watching, Teyla quietly hoped that they would suspend their pact of non-interference in living matters for just a moment to extend a protective hand over the two men who waited in the dark.

------

"So then, my aunt Rebecca said, 'Little Johnny boy' -- and, before you start laughing, yes, that's what she always called me, and I do mean always, we're talking grown and in boot camp with a jarhead haircut and still she'd call me up on the phone and say, 'How's the military life treating you, little Johnny boy?' Anyway, Aunt Becky, being my mother's older sister, always had this overbearing streak -- I think she ran roughshod over Mom and my other aunts during the whole time they were kids, and it didn't change once they grew up. So she called me over -- 'Little Johnny boy' etc -- and with that tone in her voice, the one that makes me want to do the exact opposite of whatever's being said ... I'm sure you're entirely shocked to learn this about me, Rodney, but I have this little authority figure problem ..."

Sheppard broke off to shift himself into what he hoped would be a more comfortable position. He didn't like the way his chest felt, no matter which way he was sitting, but at least he could keep his butt from falling asleep on the cold stone floor. He'd been stretched out so that his side was against Rodney's, hopefully helping to keep his friend warm. Since this was resulting in the loss of feeling to his extremities, not to mention making it hard to breathe, he got himself in a more vertical orientation and laid his arm across Rodney's head with his hand resting on the scientist's opposite shoulder, tilting Rodney's head against his side in a sort of half-hug. Just for balance to keep himself upright, naturally, seeing as he was none too steady himself right now. His thumb against the side of Rodney's neck monitored his pulse; it was fluttery and weak.

"Okay, now, where was I? Oh, right, in Aunt Becky's parlor. Now, mind you, at this point she had no idea I was the one who threw the baseball into her china cat collection. I imagine she must've had her suspicions, seeing as I was the only boy among the cousins, but some of those girls were little hellions like you would not believe. So all I woulda had to do was play it cool and I'd be off scot-free. And seriously, that's what I was planning to do. So I opened my mouth to tell her I'd been out in the backyard with the girl cousins all afternoon. And those girls would have backed me up, I swear; not that I bullied 'em or anything, just that none of them liked Aunt Becky much, either. I opened my mouth and --"

Rodney twitched. Sheppard shut his mouth quickly and bent over him. "Hey! McKay? Rodney, you in there?"

He studied the pale face for any sign of returning awareness, and was rewarded by a slight twist of McKay's mouth.

"Rodney?"

Long-lashed eyes cracked open, revealing a hint of blue. Unfocused at first, the eyes slowly fixed on the Colonel's face bending over him.

And Sheppard laughed. Once he started, he couldn't stop. Exhaustion, relief, pain, the shaky rush after an adrenaline high ... all this combined to leave him so weak he couldn't help himself.

"Nice to..." The voice cracked, started over. "Nice to see you're enjoying my pain, Sheppard."

Sheppard tried to stop laughing, he really did, but he just collapsed against the wall, finally winding down when the laughter turned to coughing and the coughing seemed likely to split him in half. He caught his breath with a coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

"You sound like hell," Rodney rasped, apparently unaware of what he, himself, sounded like. Sheppard raised his head.

"And your voice is the dulcet tone of a bluebird on the morning hills, McKay, but who's paying attention?"

Rodney's cracked lips separated in a faint, familiar, crooked smile. And the blue eyes, what Sheppard could see of them under half-lowered eyelids, were warm.

"I was having the absolute weirdest dream," Rodney said thoughtfully, his voice still weak but growing slightly stronger. "There was a Wraith about to kill me, and I thwarted it by throwing a baseball into its good china. Then it wanted to talk to me about it, but I decided to join the Marines instead." He paused for air -- Sheppard didn't like how rough his breathing had become -- and then asked faintly, "Hey, you don't have some water, by any chance?"

Sheppard unscrewed the top of the canteen and cupped a hand under Rodney's head, lifting it so he could drink.

"I see you've been using old sweat socks as water purification equipment again," McKay murmured as Sheppard lowered his head back down. "Which military regulation is it, exactly, that states all canteens will be washed no less than once every ten years, give or take a couple?"

"You'd complain even if it was Perrier," Sheppard said, taking a small sip. His throat was so dry it hurt, but he didn't dare drink more than that. McKay probably needed it more than he did.

"Damn straight I would. Perrier? Have you ever had Perrier?" Rodney waved a hand in the air weakly. "That stuff's nasty. Tastes like tap water that's drained through cement. I'm aware the minerals are in there on purpose, but frankly, if it's so good for you, I'd like to know why half the civilized world buys water softeners to get the minerals out of their water ..."

He trailed off in mid-ramble. Sheppard leaned over him again. "Rodney?" The man's eyes had closed. Suddenly they snapped open and he stared up at the ceiling.

"The room's not actually spinning around, is it?" he asked Sheppard in a very faint voice.

"No, Rodney."

"Oh, good. It's just me, then. Well, I had to ask. You never know, some of the places we've been ..."

He trailed off once again.

"Can you breathe okay?" Sheppard asked softly, thinking what a stupid question that was. He could feel his own breath hitch as he watched Rodney struggle to breathe.

"It's been easier," Rodney admitted quietly.

"Think it would be better if you were propped up a little?"

Silence, a terrifying, too-long silence ... then a soft, "Maybe."

Sheppard shifted his stiff, aching body, feeling something grind unpleasantly inside his chest as he did so. He got an arm under Rodney, lifted him up, and for lack of a better place to put him, he tilted McKay's upper body across his own, supporting him with an arm across his chest. Rodney's head flopped weakly to the side and rested in the hollow of Sheppard's shoulder. He could feel the slight warmth of McKay's breathing ... the only warmth in the man at all; the rest of him was ice cold. God, he should have known better than to leave a sick man lying on the icy floor for so long...

"Better?" he asked.

Rodney's head shifted in a slight nod. After a moment he murmured, having to pause for breath every few words, "If we die this way ... and they find us this way ... I swear to God I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kick your ass."

"Nobody's dying anytime soon," Sheppard said, tightening his arm a trifle in spite of the uncomfortable things that the added pressure did to his injured chest. "In spite of all your efforts to the contrary," he added.

"Oh, that's great, mock the sick man," Rodney mumbled. "I'll have you know I knew exactly what I was doing when I stepped into that teleporter. Even if some people were too dense to take a hint."

"I wasn't talking about that."

A long silence. Sheppard realized too late that he'd just ratcheted the "discomfort" level of the conversation up about forty notches and cast frantically around for something else to talk about. The alternative would be letting McKay drift back off, and he wasn't ready to be alone in the dark again. "Have I told you about my Aunt Becky?" he asked, desperately.

"I had an Aunt Becky once," Rodney murmured in a dreamy voice, and then, sounding slightly clearer: "No, wait. I dreamed that. Hold on just a minute. Am I dreaming your screwed-up life, Sheppard?"

"I was talking to you while you were asleep."

"Oh Lord. I vaguely remember a dream in which I found myself snogging a Goa'uld larvae in the tool shed behind my mother's garden ... are you responsible for that?"

"That would probably be Meg Becker, tenth grade," Sheppard admitted, guiltily.

"Sheppard," Rodney said, sounding somewhat stronger, "assuming that I ever become, I don't know, comatose, if you should take it into your spiky head to do the 'bereaved friend sitting at the bedside talking for hours' bit ... please, please do something useful with yourself instead, such as going and cleaning my labs or some constructive task along those lines. Help me remember this. When I get back to Atlantis, I'm writing it into my living will ... wait, I don't have one ... Okay, I'm writing a living will and it will include the provision that if I'm in a coma, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard is not allowed within two hundred yards of the infirmary without having his mouth sewn shut ... Hey, do you think Beckett would do that?" he asked eagerly.

"Do what?"

"Sew your mouth shut."

"Rodney, are you delirious?" Sheppard asked warily.

"No, just hoping to avoid another round of your life passing in front of my eyes as portrayed by an all-star cast of the Pegasus and Milky Way galaxy's alien races."

"That's fine, McKay. The next time you need to be talked out of a coma, Teyla can do it."

"You can't talk people out of comas," Rodney mumbled. There was a pause, then a soft murmur trailing into silence: "That's a ... myth ..."

"Rodney?" There was no answer. Sheppard shook him gently. "McKay, answer me!"

After a pause, Rodney said in a faint but unmistakably annoyed voice, "Sheppard, I swear to God, if you don't leave me alone and let me sleep, I am going to crawl away from here and find a less annoying patch of wall to lean against."

"You can sleep as long as you keep breathing while you do it."

"I didn't stop breathing, did I?" Now the mumble sounded anxious.

"Well, not yet."

Rodney let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Sheppard, do us all a favor and don't take up medicine. Your patients will beat themselves to death with their own bedpans just to get away from you."

"That's nasty, McKay."

"So's your bedside manner."

Another silence, stretching out, as the light of the P-90 dimmed by imperceptible fractions as its battery slowly, very slowly, ran towards empty. Rodney's breathing evened out, somewhat less rough than it had been. And Sheppard himself tipped towards sleep, the stress and strain of the last few hours catching up with him, along with boredom and the need to pass the time somehow until Teyla and Ronon came back. His body slumped, his head dropping until his forehead rested against Rodney's tousled, sweat-damp hair. His grip across his friend's chest remained firm, however, even as the rest of him relaxed into sleep.

------

tbc

We're just about done! I'm sure all the characters are glad of that ...