FINALLY! Ye gods, sorry about the long delay. I just kept having problems with this chapter. Not to mention being continually sidetracked with my shiny new story (the first chapters of which are being beta'd even as we speak). But in any case ... here you go!

Chapter Four

The Atlantis infirmary was a hastily constructed field hospital still in the process of being slowly converted into something permanent and lasting. Beckett and his people had taken over a suite of rooms whose function was entirely unknown (lab? kitchen? conference room?), and there they'd hung up sheets to offer something vaguely resembling privacy while they unpacked, put together and installed various pieces of equipment.

In the midst of a sea of half-unpacked crates and scurrying nurses, Sheppard lay on a military-issue cot with a warm IV in his arm and a pile of blankets on top of him, glowering up at a very unsympathetic Beckett.

"You said yourself that I'm fine."

"No, I said that you're going to be fine, once we get your core temperature up, your glucose levels straightened out, and, of course, get back the results on your bloodwork and make sure you didn't pick up some kind of alien pathogen from the water."

"And what, exactly, are the odds of that happening?" Sheppard demanded, trying once again to squirm into a comfortable position on the cot. "McKay says it was just seawater, not sewage."

Beckett rolled his eyes and waved his arm at one of the makeshift privacy curtains around them, with machinery beeping behind it. "What were the odds of Corporal Bond turning out to be allergic to a compound in the paint in the room we're using for a mess hall and going into anaphylactic shock in the middle of the lunch line?" He gestured at another curtain. "How about Dr. Jameson accidentally using her gene to trigger the refrigeration equipment in the kitchen and trapping herself inside a meat locker? She's very lucky to be alive! And we just released Private MacKenzie -- I'm sure you remember, the young lad who electrocuted himself while helping some of McKay's scientists wire their new lab for the laptops."

With each new reminder of their fairly extensive (if, so far, nonfatal) casualty list, Sheppard's buoyant spirits dropped a bit further. "Look, I've been in here visiting my guys every day, haven't I? I get it, Doc. I do."

"Do you?" Beckett softened a bit. "This isn't a dangerous place, necessarily, but it's a place we don't understand yet. We don't know what anything around here does. I'd really rather not have you be the guinea pig who finds out the hard way that human beings can't tolerate Atlantean seawater. Either of you."

This last was directed at McKay, who appeared not to hear it. The scientist had been declared healthy after only a cursory examination -- unlike Sheppard, he hadn't swallowed any of the water in his initial dunking and the water on his side of the bulkhead had only been about a foot deep -- but, like Sheppard, he wasn't allowed to leave until the results of their bloodwork came back. At least they were both dressed; Sheppard had protested changing into a hospital gown with enough volume that Beckett had eventually dispatched a nurse to bring clean, dry clothes from their quarters.

After putting up with a nonstop litany of the many things that Rodney knew he was allergic to (along with several dozen things that he thought he might be) Beckett had gotten someone to loan him a laptop in the hopes it would keep him busy, and he was now hunched over it, sitting in a chair wedged between two crates, and uncharacteristically silent -- absorbed in typing and occasionally scribbling calculations on a pad of paper he'd snatched from a passing nurse.

"Integral of x over the product of -- hey, quit that." He blinked at Beckett irritably when the doctor flashed a light in his eyes. "Oh, cut it out. If I was going to have a reaction to anything in that water, I would have by now. Believe me, you'll be the first to know if I suddenly stop breathing."

"Actually, you'll be the first to know. Give me an arm."

Rodney shifted an elbow up onto one of the crates and continued typing as Beckett attempted to take his blood pressure. "I hope you realize, Dr. Do-Nothing, that you are singlehandedly setting back scientific knowledge each time you interrupt my train of thought."

"Somehow I'll live with it," Beckett retorted dryly, and still holding the blood pressure cuff, in a smooth motion he spun around and smacked Sheppard's hand away from the IV -- the major had been tugging on it, trying to get enough slack to roll over. "Stop that! Do I have to sedate you?"

"I don't really need this, do I?" Sheppard complained, one hand thrusting out from under the blankets to lift up the IV's feed line.

"Do you ever listen to me?" Beckett asked rhetorically, seizing Sheppard's hand and raising it in front of his face. "Not only is it helping warm you up, but see how you're trembling? Your body used a hell of a lot of energy keeping itself warm, Major, and where do you think it comes from? Unless you'd rather drink a quart of glucose solution laced with antibiotics ... yes, you need it." He turned to point at McKay. "I also remember telling you to eat something, unless you want a needle in your arm as well?"

Rodney waved a half-eaten powerbar at him. "Already way ahead of you, mommy dearest."

Beckett removed the blood pressure cuff from his arm and rolled it up. "Attitude notwithstanding, you're both doing fine. I'll let you know when you can leave -- which will be whenever we get the bloodwork processed so that we know neither of you will be dropping dead in your quarters." He turned to go.

"Hey!" Sheppard protested. "You're leaving me here with him?"

"Try and contain your enthusiasm," McKay muttered, his nose almost touching the laptop screen.

"Yes," Beckett said briefly, then turned back. "Oh ... if either of you need to use the ...facilities, ask one of the nurses to show you."

"I know where the infirmary bathrooms are," Sheppard said.

"I'm sure you do," Beckett retorted. "Too bad they're not working at the moment."

Rodney seemed to take this as a personal insult. "Working on it!" he snapped, nose to the laptop.

Sheppard raised his head. "Wait a minute. If the bathrooms aren't working, what are you using?"

"If you're lucky, you won't have to find out," Beckett said dryly and vanished behind one of the curtains.

Sheppard groaned and resigned himself to being stuck, for the time being. Damn it, with all the fluids they were pumping into him, he already had to go. Or maybe it was just psychological. He squirmed under the blankets, seeking a position in which the bar across the middle of the cot wasn't digging into his back. Eventually he gave up and laid an arm across his eyes to shut out the light. Too bad he couldn't shut out Rodney's muttering as the scientist conducted his train of thought out loud.

"... but why would they carry the waste products from the south wing under the -- oh, no, wait a minute, they must have routed that conduit through the fourth floor, not the fifth. Aha! Then in order to find somewhere to reroute the main southern line, all you have to do is figure up the angles between the two secondary lines and ... Crap, what if our cutting torches don't work on that weird ceramicky stuff they used for the pipes? Can't reroute 'em if you can't splice 'em. Cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose. Where was I? Oh yes. Angles of ... hm, we're not using that floor at all, I wonder if you could actually just bypass it entirely? Ahaha! That would make it insanely easy to run an outflow pipe straight from the kitchen area to the secondary disposal unit under the --"

Sheppard finally couldn't take it anymore. "McKay, please don't make me come over there and stuff that laptop down your throat. I'll probably pull out my IV and Beckett will put restraints on me. I'd hate to have it come to that."

"Well, isn't someone testy," McKay snapped, hitting keys a little harder than necessary. "I'm only trying to fix an entire city, it's not like I'm doing anything important over here."

"Testy, huh? Call me crazy here, but almost drowning tends to put me in a bad mood, McKay."

To his surprise, there was no answering snipe from McKay. Sheppard peeked out from under his arm and saw that the scientist's attention appeared to be fixed entirely on the laptop screen. His lips were compressed to a thin line and he was hitting the keys almost hard enough to knock off the keycaps. Startled, Sheppard rewound his memory through the last couple of sentences and then winced inwardly. Dammit, he's still feeling guilty about wiring around the failsafes in the hallway.

Well, he should feel guilty; he DID almost drown me!

Yeah, but not on purpose.

Shit, I'm arguing with myself. Maybe Beckett's right about that water...

Protesting sounds from one of the nurses dragged him out of his thoughts, alerting them both to visitors in the infirmary before Weir appeared around a pile of crates. "Major," she greeted them. "Dr. McKay."

Sheppard thought about getting up, then decided that it was more comfortable to lay here with his arm over his face. "Hi," he said. "We got wet."

"I heard, yes. Apparently not all the flooded sections of the city are showing up on the sensors."

"Which is my fault how?" McKay demanded tetchily.

Raising his arm a trifle, Sheppard saw her flash McKay a critical look. "I never said it was your fault at all. Dr. Zelenka is currently getting the seawater pumped out of that section."

McKay raised his eyes briefly to her face. "If you left him in charge, this conversation is pointless, because we're all going to die horribly. Death by drowning ... it isn't pretty. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that, because the Major has kindly penciled in 'death by Wraith' for me for next Tuesday, right after 'death by puddlejumper crash' at 2:30 and leading into a pleasant evening of avoiding hostile natives in predator-infested jungles, followed by more death."

Weir swiveled to look at Sheppard. "Care to fill me in on what he's talking about?"

Sheppard sighed, and shifted his arm back across his eyes. "I think he's talking about going through the gate. I'm choosing my teams for offworld missions. I chose Rodney here for the key team ... mine."

He peeked under his arm again to see that she was beaming at McKay. "Excellent choice, Major."

"Yes, I know, I'm indespensable here, that's what I keep telling hi--what?"

"You're the head of the science team, Rodney; what better person to entrust with our search for ZPMs?"

"Excuse me? Hello? Not field certified?"

"He hasn't said yes yet," Sheppard informed her.

"I noticed, yes."

McKay's mercurial face shifted, became very solemn. "Dr. Weir, just now I flooded a hallway and nearly killed the Major. I do not, repeat do not, believe that sending me offworld is a good idea. Besides," he added, "as useful as I might be on an offworld mission, I'm far more useful here."

Sheppard twisted his head sideways on the pillow. "What, and leave you here to flood more hallways? For the good of Atlantis, Elizabeth, I have to take him with me. He'll sink the place in days if I leave him here."

McKay glowered at him.

"Rodney," Elizabeth said, "as I told you when we spoke over the radio, I do not blame you for the accident in the corridor, and my official report will reflect that. Dr. Zelenka tells me that all of the scientists have been disabling failsafes since the beginning -- the city, however well-preserved, is still ten thousand years old and if you weren't able to bypass damaged systems, we'd still be eating cold MREs in the dark. You had no way of knowing what would happen this time."

McKay, looking gratified, opened his mouth to answer her, when Sheppard pointed at him and rode right over the top of whatever he was going to say: "See! That's just what I told you down below. Aside from the MREs bit. They have chemical heaters in 'em, Elizabeth."

"Er, what?" Weir turned to him.

"MREs. They're self-heating. You actually mean that you've spent all this time around the military without ever eating an MRE?"

Her lips twitched. "I'm afraid the topic never came up."

Sheppard grinned. "I'll just have to have Bates show you one later. Anyway, MREs aside, I seem to be picking up the vibe that the plumbing's totally down now. Is that true?"

"Unfortunately, it's true. We've established temporary latrines on the south pier, but I'd really appreciate if this didn't become a permanent solution."

"Luckily for all of us," McKay said after a final dirty look at Sheppard, "I have one. A solution, I mean. Now that I know what's causing the problem ... at least, what circumstantial evidence would indicate is causing the problem ... all we have to do is reroute the waste disposal conduits around the damaged area, and it'll come back online. Couldn't be easier."

"How long do you think it will take?"

McKay shrugged. "Depends on how long Doctor Happyfingers and Nurse Ratched over there keep us trapped in the infirmary. I can hardly do anything from here."

"Besides talk," Sheppard muttered. "You seem to be doing really well at that."

"Give me a ballpark figure," Weir said, endeavoring to ignore him.

"I don't know! A day? Maybe two? I have no clue how extensive the damage is, not until I get back down there. I'm just hoping to get the system up and running again before Thursday."

Sheppard raised his brows. "What happens on Thursday?"

"Squid night at the cafeteria," Rodney said in a tone of deep gloom.

"We can't be out of food already! How many supplies did we bring through the gate?"

"We're not out," Elizabeth said, "but we're not in great shape either. It'll be awhile before we truly start having problems, but we are trying to feed more twice the people that our supplies were designed for, and the Athosian kids, in particular, need more variety than we can offer them. I realize it doesn't pertain to the business at hand, but how is that search for offworld food sources coming along, Major?."

"It might be coming along faster if I had a full team," Sheppard retorted, giving McKay a pointed look.

"No thanks. I'd rather die of food poisoning here, than die of Wraith on some godforsaken desert planet."

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "We don't go to desert planets, McKay. We go to planets with humans on them. You know, inhabitable worlds with ZPMs."

"Gentlemen," Elizabeth said, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Beckett, who glanced at the nearly deflated bag of saline and antibiotic solution on Sheppard's IV stand and detached the needle.

"Well?" Sheppard said.

"Bloodwork looks good. Your color's better too. As long as you promise to go straight back to your quarters and lay down for a while, I'll let you go, but I need to get a temperature first."

Sheppard eyed him warily from his cocoon of blankets. "You'd better mean orally."

"No, rectally, you dunce." Beckett rolled his eyes at the question, but Rodney sprang to his feet.

"Well, I guess that's my cue to go! I'm free to go, right?"

"You are in a minute," Beckett said absently, reaching into the pocket of his lab coat with theatrical slowness. His eyes were on Sheppard's face, on the skeptical look warring with disbelieving disgust on Sheppard's face -- the major knew he was being jerked around but there was just that little part of him that thought Beckett might actually be serious, until Beckett came up with a perfectly ordinary thermometer. His lips twitched and he was obviously struggling to suppress a grin at Sheppard's look of relief and annoyance. "But I want to see you back here at the first sign of any sort of unexpected symptoms," he added over his shoulder to Rodney, who was jittering with impatience to be off to his labs. "Right away, you hear me?"

Elizabeth watched the byplay with some difficulty keeping the grin off her own face. As their leader, she hoped that the banter boded well for their ability to work together in the future. Stranded in a distant galaxy, hunted by hostile aliens, they did not need any more of the personality conflicts that she could sense brewing over in Rodney's wing.

Speaking of McKay, he was already on his way out the door with an irritated "Yeah, whatever."

Weir nodded a hasty farewell to Beckett and Sheppard, and followed him.

Rodney strode down the corridor with the air of a man on a mission, and it took him a few minutes to notice he was being followed. His initial reaction appeared to be annoyance, but it was with more amusement than anything else that he finally said, a bit archly, "Going my way, Dr. Weir?"

She fell into step with him. "May I walk you to your lab? I would like to discuss your plan before you put it into effect."

McKay glanced at her. She could see the effort it took him not to roll his eyes impatiently. "I thought you wanted this fixed quickly!"

"I do. But most plans, no matter how brilliant, are more effective if their strengths and weaknesses are assessed before they're implemented."

"What, exactly, do you think I'm doing right now?"

"You miss my point, Doctor," Weir said. "I mean that sometimes, the flaws in a plan only become apparent when it's discussed with another person."

"Dr. Weir, to be quite blunt, there's no one on this station who is capable of keeping up with me mentally. If I stopped to explain every thought I have to every dullard around me, I'd never get anything done! Er, no offense, and I'm clearly not including you in the 'dullard' category, but ..."

"...I'm not a scientist," Weir said, a faint grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Precisely."

"Has the thought occurred to you that perhaps sometimes a non-scientist could provide a needed sounding board -- an outside perspective, as it were?"

"Dr. Weir," Rodney said, "if you're suggesting that I should run my science department by committee ..."

"No, no, no." She fell silent for a moment, casting about for the best way to phrase her point. Being Rodney's boss, she was beginning to realize, was rather like trying to steer a runaway big-rig. You couldn't stop it, or really control it; but with skill and discipline, you could point it in the right direction and keep it from running over anybody. Even at the SGC, there were few people who could hold a candle to Rodney for his energy or intelligence; but she also had the sense that under the manic surface lurked a potential dark side -- ego, insecurities, an inability to work with others. As his boss, it was her job to harness his energy and keep it working for them rather than at cross purposes. The trouble was that it took an incredibly deft hand to manage someone who was so shockingly smart.

... but not always as smart as he thought, because he'd taken her silence entirely the wrong way. Being Rodney, however, he reacted with irritation rather than hurt. "You said you didn't blame me for the accident under the city," he protested, sounding petulant.

"I don't," Weir said quickly -- hopefully not too quckly; she truly didn't, but she also didn't want to give his paranoia any room for play. "And I'm sure it will be the only be the first -- this is not at all a smear on your abilities, Rodney, but I have no doubt that there will be other accidents, perhaps many of them, before we finish exploring this city, this galaxy. It's unavoidable. I don't want my people to stifle themselves from taking necessary risks in order to avoid accidents. However, what I do want to see is everyone in this city learning from their mistakes."

"What, do you think I'm not?"

Rodney bristled at what he obviously saw as a slight on his abilities, and Weir suppressed a sigh; he went on the defensive so easily! It was a constant strain just to try to work around the man's hundreds of sharp corners --

"Well, are you?" The lazy, challenging voice came from behind. Weir and Rodney both glanced back, equally surprised to see Sheppard following them.

"Am I what?" McKay demanded. "And how long have you been there?"

"My quarters are in this direction, McKay. Trust me, I'm not following either one of you. Not that it hasn't been an interesting conversation."

"Major, if you don't have something to add...?" Elizabeth inquired pointedly. The absolute last thing she needed while trying to defuse McKay was Sheppard needling the situation with his own particular lack of tact.

"Just this." Sheppard pointed at Rodney, who looked startled. "You've got a stratospheric I.Q., but where were you when they handed out the social intelligence? McKay, I've worked with all of you for exactly four days and I can see what she's getting at. Do you?"

Weir -- once again experiencing the all-too-familiar sensation of the conversation spinning out of her control -- knew that she should try to shut Sheppard up, but it all happened so fast, and to her own embarrassment she was caught up in the parade of emotions on Rodney's amazingly expressive face -- everything from hurt to anger to a kind of fleeting, irritated amusement. Annoyance kept winning, though. "Who do you think you are? I don't need to be lectured by you! Do you know how many PhD's I have? How many do you have, Major?"

Sheppard folded his arms. "Most of what I know, I learned in what you might call the school of hard knocks. I learned it from leading men in combat zones, from fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with people who survived and a good number who didn't." McKay kept trying to get a word in edgewise, but Sheppard just talked right over him. "Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm never the first in line when they hand out the medals for following orders, but what I do know is that in a war zone, the first thing you think about is the people around you."

McKay finally managed to wriggle his way into Sheppard's monologue. "Excuse me, but did I miss the part where you told me just why, exactly, you've taken it upon yourself to enlighten me about the military chain of command? Considering that I'm neither a soldier nor am I in a combat zone?"

Sheppard's eyebrows shot up. "And where exactly do you think you are? Las Vegas? This is a war, McKay, make no mistake about that. We may not be actively fighting at the moment, but every last one of us are in a hostile zone and dependent on each other to keep our backs."

Something in McKay's face shut down. "So you're saying I'm not a team player. Big whooping deal, people have been telling me that since I could--"

"McKay, for cryin' out loud, would you quit making it about you all the time? All I'm saying -- all she's saying --" and he flashed a little eyeroll in Elizabeth's direction, as if just remembering that she was there; she pressed her lips together, not sure if she was trying to stop herself from smiling or yelling at him " -- is that making plans without asking for your team's input isn't something you do when other people rely on you. McKay --" Rodney's eyes had begun drifting down to the notes and figures on the upturned screen of his laptop. "Dammit, McKay, I'm talking to you!" Sheppard barked in his best drill-sergeant tone, and Elizabeth jumped.

So did Rodney. "Jesus, Sheppard, you sound exactly like my fourth-grade teacher!"

"Just getting your attention."

"I'm perfectly capable of multi-tasking, Major. And we do have a crisis; you realize that, right?"

Sheppard aimed his finger at Rodney's face. "But you'll think about what I said. Right?"

McKay rocked back on his heels, rolled his eyes theatrically. "Major, I am not capable of not thinking, unlike certain people who are naturally talented in that area -- uh, are you okay?"

This was in response to Sheppard staggering suddenly, his legs threatening to buckle. He caught himself on the wall and waved off the concerned moves that both McKay and Weir had made in his direction.

"Should you be out of the infirmary?" Weir asked him.

"I'm peachy." Sheppard supported himself with a hand on the wall. "Beckett said I might be a little woozy for a while. Blood sugar's all wacked out and stuff."

Rodney winced sympathetically, all traces of his earlier anger vanished -- if, Weir thought, he'd ever really been angry at all. "Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt."

"You're going straight to your quarters," Weir told Sheppard. "After you get some sleep, I'd like you to check in with Beckett again -- and I intend to have him report you if you don't."

Despite Sheppard's increasingly obvious weariness, he grinned cheekily at her. "Yes, mother."

"I need you in top form, Major. Now more than ever."

He gave her an exaggerated salute, and a little finger-waggle at McKay, whose eyes followed him down the corridor -- no doubt noting, as Elizabeth did, the slight shakiness in his walk.

They were all tired, Weir realized. No wonder Sheppard had jumped at the chance to get away from the main part of the city for a few hours. Since the raising of Atlantis, they'd all been going nonstop from one crisis to another.

Rodney, for his part, watched Sheppard very nearly take a header as he went around the corner and vanished. The man really shouldn't be up and walking about. What was wrong with that quack Carson? He became aware of Weir's eyes on him and looked up at her, feeling himself slip back into defensive mode. However, she was smiling.

"He really likes you, you know."

"What? Who?" Stupid question; who in the world other than Sheppard could she mean? "Why?" Okay, that really had come out wrong. There certainly wasn't any reason why someone shouldn't like him. Still ... most people tended not to, especially at first encounter.

Weir's smile grew a little wider. "I don't know. Why don't you ask him?"

McKay shook his head. "Nothing doing. I'm not getting near him again if I can help it. That man's trying to drag me off to other planets. He's insane."

"Don't you want to go?"

"Of course," Rodney said automatically, then winced inside. Damn it, how did the woman do that? "But clearly I'm needed here. The plumbing is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm the only one who can figure out half the systems in the city and you know it."

"I do know that," Weir said.

He faltered, not having expected agreement. "Really?"

"That's why I originally wanted you here in the Pegasus galaxy, Rodney. But you're also the only person who can figure out a lot of things we're going to find offworld -- including, perhaps, the location of a new zero point module."

Aaargh, it was a conspiracy. He wondered if Sheppard had already talked to Weir, gotten her on his side. "Dr. Weir, with all due respect, I hardly think that the best interests of the city are served by me getting my brains sucked out by a Wraith on some pitiful excuse for a planet somewhere."

Weir shrugged. "I'm not going to force you to do anything, obviously. This is a volunteer mission and I intend to continue in the volunteer spirit to the extent that I am able. No one is going to be press-ganged into a potentially dangerous assignment while I'm in charge. And there is going to be danger on offworld missions, I can't deny it." She looked at him. "Having said that, I will tell you this. Major Sheppard appears to be willing to place a lot of faith in you, Rodney. How you repay that, of course, is entirely up to you. But I'd put some thought into it from that angle, as well."

He couldn't figure out if she was trying to manipulate him or not. God, he hated dealing with people. It was exhausting trying to figure out the ins and outs of interpersonal relationships -- the thousands of unsaid things lurking under the surface words. Computers were so much easier to comprehend, so much more relaxing to be around. Right now, all he wanted to do was lock himself in his lab for about a thousand years and have nothing to do with anyone on this mission ever again. Naturally, that was the one luxury in which he could not indulge at the moment.

"Are you saying you want me to go talk to him? Just say so, please. I've got a city full of broken plumbing and very little time for guessing games."

She spread her hands. "I don't 'want' you to do anything, Rodney. The only thing you should be doing right now -- aside from fixing the plumbing, of course -- is thinking this over. All of it -- the accident, the chain of events that led to it, and, of course, Sheppard's offer. Regarding the last part, rest assured that I will support you in whatever you decide, as long as you make the decision that feels right to you. And keep in mind, too, that you can always change your mind later, if you like."

Change his mind. Of course. For some reason, that thought hadn't even occurred to him. He could go on one mission, and if it didn't work out, he could simply request a different assignment, no harm done. In fact, he could probably even come up with an excuse for it that would get Sheppard off his back permanently ... like ... paralyzing agoraphobia or something. Rodney, for the smartest guy in the galaxy, you can be a real idiot sometimes, he thought to himself.

Dr. Weir must have seen his facial expression change, because she was observing him intently with one eyebrow cocked up. "Thanks," he said, meaning it.

A second eyebrow joined the first one. "You're welcome," she said. "Now get out there and fix your city, Rodney."

---

TBC ... hopefully in less than a month this time. There will probably be one or two more parts to this one.