Chapter 5
"Ronon. Get back to the Gate! We need Beckett here, now!" Sheppard launched himself from the pilot's seat and was through the cockpit doors and at McKay's side before the scientist had completed his slow collapse.
As he knelt beside Rodney's shuddering form Sheppard silently berated himself. Damn it, how had he let it get this far? He'd seen the signs; McKay had been jumping at shadows from the moment they had come through the Gate. He should have called an end to this at the first hint of a problem.
He caught hold of Rodney's head, preventing it from smacking into the deck as a spasm wracked through McKay's body.
"Hang on, Rodney." Sheppard glanced around the rear of the Jumper, searching for something to cushion the scientist's head. Teyla's bunched jacket appeared at his shoulder and he grabbed it without looking round, wadding it into a makeshift pillow.
"Rodney, stay with me." He watched helplessly as increasingly powerful convulsions shook McKay. They had come back to the planet to try and find a way to stop Rodney from leaving Atlantis, but now it looked as though they might lose him completely.
Where the hell was Beckett? It felt like hours had past since he'd sent Ronon back to the Gate, rather than a scant handful of seconds.
"Sheppard." At the sound of Ronon's deep voice John raised a hand to his headset, before realising that the voice had come from inside the Jumper.
Tearing his eyes away from McKay's twitching face, Sheppard looked around. Ronon was standing behind him, his gun trained unwaveringly on a short figure with wild hair. John recognised the trader as one that they had met before and glared at the Runner, barely containing his anger. What the hell was Ronon doing, wasting time on a harmless merchant, when McKay needed medical help now?
Ronon's gun remained steady on the trader as the big man calmly met Sheppard's eyes.
"Colonel Sheppard, he appeared from nowhere." Teyla's soft voice sounded loud inside the Jumper and Sheppard turned to face the small, unassuming man who stood before him.
"Please, allow me to help." The trader spoke in a quiet, reassuring voice as he stepped forward towards McKay.
"Whoa, hold on a minute." Sheppard held out an arm, blocking his path. The trader might look harmless but no one was getting near McKay until he was sure of their intentions.
Without warning, a shimmer fractured the air in front of Sheppard's outstretched arm and the trader vanished from sight, re-appearing almost instantly at McKay's side. Startled, Sheppard span on his knees, raising his P-90, but the small man had already reached out to touch McKay.
Ignoring Sheppard's cry of surprise, the trader gently placed a hand on McKay's contorted brow, and immediately the violent trembling began to ease. John watched, his P-90 still at the ready, as the tension drained from Rodney's features, leaving him unconscious but with a look of utter tranquillity on his face.
oOo
John satisfied himself that Rodney's condition was stable before turning his attention to the figure that was now standing at his side. Although he was dressed in homespun cloth, apparently patched with moss and bark, a subtle aura of power surrounded the small man, and Sheppard wondered how they had ever mistaken him for a simple merchant.
The alien returned Sheppard's look with a benign smile. "Your friend will need rest now for a time; his mind is exhausted. The strain was too much for him to bear." He looked down at McKay with an expression of sadness. "I am sorry, the fault was mine."
John wasn't sure whether the man was speaking to him or to Rodney, but the remorse in his voice sounded genuine. However, the Colonel wasn't ready to completely trust his words. Glancing up at his team, Sheppard saw that Ronon's gun was still aimed firmly in the trader's direction; he nodded at the Runner to keep it there.
Turning back to Rodney's still form, Sheppard again checked the scientist's pulse. It was weak, but steady. John looked back up at the small figure standing beside him. Somehow this person was involved with the mystery of Rodney's recent behaviour. Despite Sheppard's misgivings he had shown himself to be more than he appeared. Hoping that he would have at least some answers, Sheppard asked the one question that needed answering, "Will he be okay?" All other questions could wait.
The man calmly held Sheppard's gaze. "He has a strong mind;" He smiled reassuringly, "I am sure that it will be enough."
Catching Teyla's soft sigh of relief, John flashed her a quick grin; he shared the sentiment. Taking a deep breath he let it out slowly.
Okay, now it was time for the rest of the questions. Sheppard rose to his feet, giving him at least fourteen inches of height on the child-sized trader. He left the threat unspoken as he asked calmly, "Who are you and what did you do to him?"
The man was unfazed and smiled up at Sheppard. "My name is Palandrus; my people are the Nox."
oOo
Sheppard frowned. Although he hadn't read the reports himself, he'd heard McKay and Elizabeth talking about the Nox as one of the four greatest races ever to have existed in the Milky Way Galaxy. The tiny figure standing in front of him seemed at odds with that description, but John had seen far too many strange things since stepping through the Stargate to deny that it could be true. However, he had never heard Rodney or Elizabeth mention that the Nox were present in Pegasus.
"Like the race you call 'Ancients', we have travelled widely." John narrowed his eyes at Palandrus' words. The man seemed to have read his thoughts, and that made Sheppard nervous.
"You have no reason to fear; we wish you no harm." Again, the words sounded sincere. But John wasn't ready to trust him yet.
Sheppard looked back to McKay. Ronon had lifted the scientist off the hard, metal deck and onto one of the Jumper's padded benches. Meanwhile, Teyla had taken a blanket from the storage locker, managing to make McKay as comfortable as possible. From where Sheppard stood, it looked as though Rodney was sleeping peacefully, but Teyla caught his eye with a worried frown.
John felt his face harden. He didn't care how great or powerful the Nox were, one of them had done this to McKay, and that made them the enemy until he could be convinced otherwise. There was a coldness in his voice when he spoke. "I won't ask again, what did you do to him?"
"I meant no harm to any of your people."
From behind him, John could hear the sound of Ronon's gun powering up, and the Runner's deep voice demanded, "Answer the man."
Palandrus appeared unintimidated by Ronon's towering presence, his compassionate smile undiminished. "Your friend had unpleasant memories of his last time in our forest; they were replaced. This caused some confusion in his mind."
John frowned. Rodney hadn't been out of his sight once for the entire time of the team's first visit to M4A-635. Even while Teyla had been negotiating, John had kept an eye on him; Rodney had a talent for getting into trouble, but the mission had been as close to routine as they came.
As far as he remembered.
John's P-90 joined Ronon's gun covering the Nox.
"Rodney's weren't the only memories you replaced, were they?" Sheppard didn't wait for the reply. "Why?"
"I thought it necessary." Palandrus turned to McKay's still form and shook his head sadly, "But it may have been a mistake."
"Damn right it was a mistake!" Sheppard felt the heat of anger rise within him. "Now, tell me exactly what you're trying to hide that's so important!"
Palandrus sighed. "What happened to you here was such that you could not have accepted it. We merely wish to be left alone, but, once you knew of us, you would have returned seeking our help. We do not wish to become involved in your battle with the Wraith."
John's P-90 didn't waver. "Show me", he demanded, his anger mounting, "Show me what really happened here."
oOo
Teyla had kept silent throughout Sheppard's exchange with the little man, who was now obviously something more than the simple trader that she remembered from her previous negotiations on this planet.
Now she could sense the power that flowed through him. It had gently swelled when he had touched Rodney. She had almost seen the tension being drawn away from the scientist's body and into the man who called himself Palandrus.
As she watched, the power intensified again and a look of shock slammed into Sheppard's face.
"Colonel Sheppard? John? What is the matter?" The Colonel ignored her question, staring at her, dumbstruck. A moment later his eyes seemed drawn to a point at her feet on the Puddlejumper's metal deck. She followed his gaze but could see nothing amiss.
Lifting her P-90, she trained the heavy weapon on the Nox, who now stood with his hands clasped before him, the power ebbing away.
"What have you done to the Colonel?" She demanded of the small man.
Palandrus looked up into her eyes. "Your friend wanted to know what really happened here. I have let him see. He is in no danger, I promise you."
Teyla regarded him through narrowed eyes. She felt no malevolence in the Nox, but whatever he had just done was affecting the Colonel deeply.
She watched guardedly as Sheppard turned his face towards Ronon and suddenly winced, flinching away from the Runner as if from a painful blow or the sight of some grisly scene that only he could see.
Finally, Sheppard looked down at McKay, his eyes widening in horror as he stared aghast at the unconscious man.
"Rodney." John's voice was a whisper, heavy with emotion. Teyla felt her chest tighten at the depths of anguish and despair in that single word.
Sheppard reached out towards McKay, but stopped just before his hand touched the scientist's face, his outstretched fingers slowly curling into a fist.
Without warning, Sheppard span round, P-90 raised, the despair on his face instantly masked by a towering rage. His eyes darted around the Jumper as if looking for someone or something to attack.
"John." Teyla tried again to reach the Colonel with her words; her voice soft as she attempted to break through the almost tangible anger and grief that surrounded him.
"Oh my god, Teyla." Sheppard's eyes focussed on her own and she found herself recoiling from what she saw deep within them. The pain and loss was heartbreaking to see. The Colonel's words merely confirmed what she somehow already knew, "He died, here; we all did."
Palandrus' gentle voice broke the silence that followed. "Yes, you died. But we revived you. Death is not always the one-way journey that your people believe."
Sheppard showed no sign of hearing the Nox' words and looked back down at McKay.
"He remembered that?" He shook his head in horror. "The poor bastard."
"I am afraid that your friend's experience was worse." Palandrus explained, his tone regretful. "His original memories resurfaced after he had left our planet. With both sets of memories, his mind was unable to determine which was reality." The Nox frowned, for the first time appearing less than certain of himself. "I am unsure why this happened. After a few hours of deep sleep the implanted memories should have been too strongly embedded to allow the old memories to return."
John closed his eyes. When he opened them the pain and grief had faded, replaced by a grim understanding. "Sleep has always been something of a rare commodity for Rodney." He gave a wry snort that contained no humour, then a thought appeared to cross his mind. "If you needed us to sleep, why did you send us back with coffee?"
Despite herself, Teyla smiled at the incongruity of the question. The Colonel was speaking to a man who claimed to have brought them back from the dead, and he was asking questions about coffee. She would never understand why these people needed to know the answers to even the smallest mysteries.
Palandrus appeared to share her amusement, his smile matching her own. "It was not exactly what you call coffee. It was a shame that your friend chose not to drink it; it would have helped him to sleep." The Nox reached out towards McKay as he lay on the Puddlejumper's bench. "But I will take that into account this time."
"Now wait a damned minute!" John's lashed out at the Nox with his words, the heat of anger returning full force. "You can't just change our memories to suit yourselves."
Palandrus seemed genuinely perplexed at John's outburst, withdrawing his hand and looking up into the Colonel's eyes with a puzzled frown. "You have seen what happened here, surely the memory I gave you was preferable."
"It was a lie." Each word was precisely spoken, the anger visibly kept in check.
"But was it not more enjoyable than the truth?"
Sheppard again spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child, "The truth may be hard to live with sometimes, but it's better than the easy lie."
Palandrus considered Sheppard's words then smiled broadly.
Teyla felt as though a curtain had been drawn back from her mind. Her memory of meeting and trading with Palandrus melted into the background until it seemed like a story that she had been told long ago. Her true memory returned almost gently; the attack by six Wraith darts, then darkness until she woke in a small cave hours later. She knew that she had died and been revived, but felt none of the pain or anger that the Colonel had shown. Obviously, something more had happened that she had not witnessed. She was about to ask the Colonel what it was that he had seen when a soft groan made them both turn.
oOo
Rodney clawed himself up out of the deep, dark pit back to consciousness. He had no idea where he was, other than he was lying on something soft, being covered by something warm. For the moment, just knowing that was enough and he lay unmoving until the fuzzy feeling of disorientation slowly cleared.
He cautiously cracked open an eye. The soft thing was the bench of a Puddlejumper and the warm thing was a blanket. At least that ruled out some of the more unpleasant scenarios. He tried to lift his head but a thudding pain filled his skull. It felt like the worst hangover that he had ever suffered, and he froze, swallowing hard to still the wave of nausea that rolled over him.
Then the memories hit. Not random visions or images now, but a single, coherent memory from the darts' attack to his own horrific death at the hands of the Wraith.
He groaned softly, realising that he had finally lost it; he was totally delusional.
At the sound of his groan a dark shape appeared at his side.
"Rodney?" The Colonel sounded anxious, "Rodney, it's okay; it's over now." McKay gave a dry chuckle. Sheppard couldn't know how true those words were. It was all over now. He was finished, a brilliant mind lost. He rolled over, turning his face towards the bulkhead, not wanting to meet Sheppard's eyes.
"Rodney, listen to me." McKay felt a hand on his shoulder and shrugged it irritably away. He curled into a tight ball, pulling the blanket over himself, immersed in his own misery. "Listen; what you were remembering was real." The Colonel's insistent voice was impossible to ignore, although he tried hard. "I was there, I watched the Wraith… Oh god, Rodney, I'm sorry. There was nothing I could do."
The pain in Sheppard's voice reached through Rodney's own wretchedness, pulling him back from the jagged edge of despair. "It was real?" McKay's voice was flat and emotionless, little more than a murmur.
Sheppard missed the whispered question and kept talking. His words were loud in the otherwise silent Jumper but only a few registered on Rodney's consciousness. 'Wraith'… 'Nox'…and, slightly perplexingly, 'coffee'. Slowly, McKay started to make sense of the words and began to uncurl from his tight knot. He wanted to believe what Sheppard was telling him, but one huge question had to be answered first.
"You mean, I'm not insane?"
The Colonel stopped dead.
"No, Rodney, you're not insane." Sheppard sounded puzzled, as if the thought had never crossed his mind.
Rodney hadn't realised quite how heavy the weight he'd been carrying had become, until it was gone.
He wasn't insane.
"Rodney?"
He wasn't insane.
"Rodney!"
A hand roughly grabbed his shoulder, hard enough to hurt, and forced him to turn round. There was astonishment in Sheppard's eyes, disbelief in his voice. "Are you saying that is what all this was about?"
Caught by surprise, McKay could only nod.
"You thought you were going mad?" Sheppard didn't give him time to reply, "Didn't it ever occur to you to tell someone?"
Rodney blinked, taken aback at the question.
After a few moments of stunned silence McKay realised that this time Sheppard was expecting an answer. "I didn't want anyone to pity me." His voice sounded sullen, even to himself.
The relief that had washed through him when he realised that he wasn't crazy was starting to give way to the awareness that he'd actually died, yet he felt strangely detached from that knowledge. He'd experienced the nightmare of his own death again and again, the very familiarity of the vision leaving him now almost numb to the fact that it was true.
The Colonel threw up his hands in exasperation, breaking through Rodney's bleak thoughts. "You wouldn't have got our pity, you idiot; you'd have got our help."
Rodney flinched away from the intensity of Sheppard's outburst, feeling the flush of irritation colouring his face. He'd been through hell over the last couple of days, and Sheppard's attitude was not helping, neither was his pounding headache. Forcing himself to his feet, he glared indignantly back at Sheppard.
"All right, Colonel, next time I think I'm going insane, I promise you'll be the first to know!"
Sheppard's eyes flashed in surprise as McKay bristled in front of him. For several seconds the two men stood face-to-face, the tension between them rising, until, unexpectedly, Sheppard's mouth quirked into an understanding grin and he shook his head.
"It's good to have you back, McKay." The warmth in the words had nothing to do with anger and Rodney found himself giving the Colonel a slightly confused smile.
"Yes, Rodney. It is good to have you back." Teyla's gentle voice caused Rodney to turn in surprise, noticing, for the first time, the three other occupants of the Puddlejumper. Ronon and Teyla, their weapons ready but lowered, and a smaller figure who was mirroring Teyla's broad smile. Even Ronon appeared pleased, as far as Rodney could tell.
Sheppard's hand fell onto McKay's shoulder once again. This time, the scientist didn't try to shrug it free.
"Now, Rodney, if you'll just fix the Jumper, we can all go home."
oOo
Palandrus and Tanayu watched as the ship carrying the four humans left through the doorway for the last time. They had given their word that they would not return and Palandrus was inclined to believe them. Soon the forest would return to tranquillity and the Nox could continue in peace.
Palandrus thought back over what the human had said. 'The truth may be hard to live with sometimes, but it's better than the easy lie'. He smiled; now, if they could only see beyond their conflict with the Wraith, there may be hope for them.
It was possible that the young were finally growing up.
