"Gauntlet of the Gods" by Krissy Mae Anderson

Summary: "Who would have thought – John Sheppard the Glorious Protector?"
Rating: T
Spoilers: general season 1 spoilers.
Disclaimer: Nope! Not mine!
Author's note: This story's a bit AU-ish, because it takes place somewhere after Siege II. This was actually my very first SGA plotbunny, born from lack of sleep and abundance of cake at ConneXions 2005. All math to be used in future chapters is the product of the mind of yours truly, and is not guaranteed, because I am horrible at math… The story's not beta-ed, and I am not really sure where and when it'll end, so enter at your own risk. Feedback/concrit is welcome and encouraged!
Acknowledgements: Thanks go to Val for the late-night torture tactics, to Mer for the GOC, to Sandy for showing me David's bum on DVD, to digitalruki for allowing me to bounce ideas off her, to Moselle Green for helping me come up with the name and to Neth Dugan and gundamnymph for being my cheerleaders.

part 1

The first mission after the Wraith siege is suddenly here, and to tell the truth, I don't think anyone is ready for it. I am not feeling very perky myself - almost blowing yourself up with a nuclear bomb sort of does take a lot out of you, even if done for a good cause. The fact that almost everyone got falling down drunk last night didn't help either. Lieutenant Marko what's-his-name managed to produce moonshine out of some mainland fruit, and brought it as a cultural contribution to the celebration Elizabeth organized to celebrate the return to normal, so to speak. All of us unsuspecting North Americans drank it like punch while Europeans looked on and snickered. I wish someone would shoot me - it's a wonder that I'm even standing upright and able to understand multi-syllable words. And I wish McKay would go to hell. He didn't drink the stuff last night, because he whined that it might have lemon in it and now he looks way too cheerful, for which he is receiving many hateful looks.

The gate whooshes and everyone in the gateroom cringes except for assholes that remained sober last night. I get an urge to stuff chocolate in my mouth to get some kind of jump-start for my slightly dead brain, but repress it. It can wait until we're on D5N-48Z. I take one last look at my team, and shudder slightly when instead of Ford I see Captain Reyes, Colonel Caldwell's personal pick for the mission. We haven't been able to find the Lieutenant, and I hate myself for celebrating last night, and hate myself for surviving and for being the dumbass who woke up the Wraith and started it all. But self-hate aside, we've got to explore the new planet because we're in need of pretty much everything now, and even alcohol-producing citrus-y fruits would be welcomed by everyone at this point. So, I stop angsting, take another quick look at our motley crew, and step through the event horizon-

-and step out unto a field in what seems to be a mountainous area, covered in colorful flowers. McKay stumbles out after me, muttering something to himself, his earlier glee apparently evaporated. Reyes and Teyla arrive after him, and after McKay finishes glaring at the new energy reader brought by Caldwell's people, he tells us that there are several unusually strong energy sources which merit some checking out. The thought of possible ZPMs arrives in our brains at the same time and we all get matching grins. After some thought, we (or rather I) decide to explore the two strongest ones. Still, we don't want to spend too much time running around from site to site, and thus we need to break up into teams. This leaves me feeling like the guy in the riddle with the wolf, goat and cabbage. Letting McKay go with either of them in his current mood doesn't seem like a wise idea, because he's still a bit weird from the recent lack of sleep and the huge doses of stimulants and I don't want him to go stealing ZPMs and pissing off natives unless I am with him to do damage control.

Thus, we decide to split in two teams, and after establishing the schedule for regular radio contact, McKay and myself head towards the strongest energy source, which seems to be on the other side of a small mountain to our left. We walk for a while in relative silence - I munch on a stolen chocolate bar and observe McKay's attempts to alert even the deaf wildlife to his arrival by trying to step on every stick and trip over every rock he encounters. I get bored after rock number fifteen, and stare at the toes of my boots for a while. After a couple of minutes, McKay manages to trip over a very big rock and bruise his shin and I decide to distract him from his tripping.

"Rodney?"

"What?" he snarls, and trips again. I manage to catch him in mid-flight and get him vertical again. He seems to lose some of his surliness all of a sudden, and opens his mouth to say something but closes it before anything comes out. My eyebrow quirks automatically, but I don't ask.

"Thank you," he mumbles, and slows down a bit. I take another chocolate bar out of my pack and break off a piece, offering him the rest. He gratefully accepts, and for a minute or two all that can be heard is us chewing and what sounds like mating squirrels off in the distance.

"How are you feeling?" he asks out of the blue, and I am so surprised I choke on a piece of chocolate and cough for a while.

"What do you mean?" I ask, wondering why he's asking me this particular question right now. "You mean after yesterday?"

He rolls his eyes. "No, I mean after - after the - that whole beaming out thing. I can see how you feel after yesterday."

"Uh- well - not too bad. Carson says I'm not going to glow in the dark and everything vital is still attached."

"Ah," he says, lapsing into silence again and I wonder if I'm suddenly in the Twilight Zone with an alternate snarkless, quiet Rodney. The idea is somewhat unsettling, and I feel the need to make small talk to make sure it's still our Rodney.

"How did you find out about your citrus allergy?" I ask out of nowhere, suddenly very interested in the cause of McKay's constant neurotic whining at parties. He looks at me strangely, probably wondering about my common sense. He's not alone there. I wonder about that all the time.

"Well, for my sixth birthday, my mom and my sister baked me a cake. Unfortunately, they baked me a Mandarine-Orange Torte, which they decorated with lemon zest." He cringes and seems to turn slightly yellow. "After I had a bite, I passed out and woke up in the hospital. That kind of clued me in."

I try to imagine Rodney as a six-year old and fail. We are almost at the top of the hill, and when we are finally at the summit, so to speak, I feel a random urge to share useless information about my childhood. What time but now to reveal absolutely useless memories?

"When I was six I broke my leg when I jumped off a slide at the school playground," I volunteer. "I thought I would gently float down to the ground. Unfortunately, gravity had other ideas…" I remember that day quite vividly. Billy Lastowski dared me to jump off, and I, being a bravely stupid six-year old who thought he could fly, accepted. Afterwards, I remember sitting on the ground and crying, unable to stand up but still insisting that I wanted to play.

Strangely enough, this incident led to one of my best childhood memories. My mother had been away visiting my grandparents with my younger brother Pete, and so my father was the one who picked me up at the hospital. By the time he came, I had stopped crying, and was just sitting on the hospital bed quietly, rubbing at my eyes with my grimy fists, and wondering if I'd be grounded forever. But my father just got his handkerchief out, cleaned my face and hands to the best of his ability, and asked me what possessed me to jump. After I whispered that I thought I could fly, he laughed - not mockingly, but in that good-natured way parents laugh when their kids do something stupid but cute. He told me to never try to fly all by myself, and carried me out to the car. We didn't go home, but instead he drove to the airport, where a friend of his worked, and I got to spend an hour sitting in the pilot's seat of a plane that was being repaired and pretending I was flying the plane. Finally, the excitement of the day caught up with me and I nodded off, and my day ended in the arms of my dad, as I sleepily touched the buttons and medals on his uniform, the controls to my imaginary plane…

"-Sheppard!" McKay yells in my ear and I almost trip. Damn, the hangover must be worse than I thought if I've managed to space out and forget where I am, which is a big no-no.

"What?" I ask somewhat snappishly.

"The source of energy seems to be in here," he says and points at a cave that has sprung out seemingly out of nowhere while I was reminiscing. "Well, go on, Major. You're the one with the big gun, and who knows what is lurking there."

"You're so selfless, Rodney," I mutter, rolling my eyes and proceeding into the cave. It's nice as caves go, and has a lived-in look, which is either a good or a bad thing. Soon, we reach a large chamber that appears to be a temple of some kind, and as soon as I ascertain that there is no one lurking in the corners McKay is off poking around the room, and by poking around I mean literally poking the wall and the objects on what seems to be an altar. I lean against the wall and watch him molest stuff for a while, but after fifteen minutes of excited ooohs and hmms I can't stand it anymore.

"Come on, we don't have all day," I say, snatching a stick out of his hand.

Biiiiig mistake.

For a moment I feel as if I am in a plane that depressurized suddenly, and then there is a fwoomp sound that makes my commlink screech like crazy for a moment and go dead. I drop the stick, clutch at my head and curse the damn piece of wood descriptively, wondering if my eardrum is blown out and if my brain will start oozing out of my ears at any moment now. Rodney yells something that I can't hear because I'm as good as deaf right now, and points in the direction we came from. When I shrug and point at my ears, he gives me a none-too-gentle shove towards the exit. I finally figure out that he means that we should probably get our asses out of here, nod, and proceed outside with the P-90 on the ready for any inhospitable local folk.

When we emerge into the sunlight, there is no one around, but a quick check of the life signs detector shows several groups of dots around our location, quickly moving towards us. I estimate where the biggest gap between the groups is, and am about to point this out to Rodney when an arrow flies right by my head. Rodney's eyes bulge almost comically, his mouth opens again and I begin to regain my hearing to swearwords that would make a Marine blush. The owner of the arrow chooses this moment to arrive with a crowd of his buddies, and that's not good, definitely not good. I'm about to point the gun at the big, mean-looking guy who seems to be in charge when something sharp pokes me in the back of the neck and I know we're definitely fucked. Big time. Before I can do anymore thinking, something slams into the back of my head and it's lights out, with my brain providing one last public service announcement before shutdown - if you don't want to get in trouble, John, don't touch anything in this galaxy ever again.