Thank you all so much for the comments on the last chapter! Thank you, also, to Erika, Derry and Tazmy for beta-ing this chapter and, once again, offering much-needed feedback on our boys' in-characterness.
"Oh for ... Where were you on the day they handed out brains, Colonel Sheppard?"
Caldwell knelt in the snow next to the two unconscious men. Using his teeth to remove the glove from his good hand, he tucked his fingers into Sheppard's collar, relieved to feel a pulse beneath the cool skin. He repeated the process on McKay, although he had to forcibly move the man's head to do so -- Rodney, probably unconsciously seeking warmth, had burrowed his face into Sheppard's shoulder. Caldwell couldn't feel a pulse, but holding the back of his hand against McKay's mouth, he could feel the slight warmth of shallow breaths.
Operating one-handed, he yanked Sheppard's coat from McKay's shoulders, levered Sheppard off the ground with his knee and tucked the coat around him. Then he shook him. Hard. When that didn't work, he smacked Sheppard across the face.
Sheppard made a garbled sound and opened his eyes, blinking owlishly as he tried to focus. "Wha-- Stop it," he mumbled, waving one hand feebly around his head in an attempt to fend off his assailant.
"Colonel, look at me. Colonel!" When Sheppard's eyes finally focused, Caldwell sat back on his heels and informed him, "You are an idiot."
"Why?" Sheppard splayed his hands out to the sides, trying to support himself in his half-sitting, half-lying position. Then his dazed eyes focused as things began to register on him: first that he was wrapped in his own coat, and second that Rodney was no longer lying on his chest. "Rodney!" He rolled over to the side, fumbling at Rodney's pulse points with hands that trembled violently from cold and, judging from the amount of blood on him, possibly shock as well.
"He's alive," Caldwell said. "No thanks to you. Giving him your coat was the stupidest thing you could possibly have done."
"And why might that be?" Sheppard snarled, in the process of shrugging off his coat to do it again. "He's hypothermic, goddammit."
"So are you, now," the Colonel retorted. "And the two of you would have died if I hadn't come looking for you. You can't help anyone if you allow yourself to become incapacitated, and you know it's true. First rule in a survival situation." He held out his hand. "Get up. I'll take him."
A bit reluctantly, Sheppard allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. He was obviously still somewhat out of it, and the blood on him wasn't just Rodney's, but this wasn't the time or place to figure out how bad he was hurt. Caldwell steadied him with a hand until he seemed able to stand on his own. Then he got a solid grip on McKay's ice-encrusted parka and hauled him up, hooking his good arm under the scientist's shoulders while trying not to jostle the broken one too much. A hiss of pain still escaped him. Back in the jumper, he'd stared longingly at the morphine auto-injectors in the medkit, but didn't dare muddy up his thinking -- damn good thing, obviously. The snow was getting deep out here and he could see why Sheppard, injured as he obviously was, hadn't been able to make it with McKay's dead weight to haul around.
He couldn't believe McKay was alive. Armstrong's shot must have only winged him, but still -- he'd survived a plunge into a winter-locked river, and, soaking wet, had managed to avoid dying of exposure and also evade Armstrong. Caldwell would never, never have imagined the physicist possessed that kind of guts and stamina. Wouldn't have given him up for dead if he had known.
"Where's Armstrong?" he asked Sheppard as they started on their way.
Sheppard swayed, but he was damn well going to have to stay upright on his own -- Caldwell wasn't feeling too steady himself, and he had his hands full with McKay. "Unconscious and tied up," Sheppard said in a thick voice, catching himself on a snow-covered tree. "Back up the valley -- near the head of it."
"Not dead?"
You didn't turn your back on someone that dangerous, and Sheppard had to know that, because he wouldn't meet Caldwell's eyes. "No," he said shortly. "Not dead."
They weren't far from the jumper, but it was nearly dark by the time they got back. Caldwell had not bothered to cloak it and, on top of that, left the running lights on as a visual aid -- they gleamed like beacons through the falling snow, lighting the way home. He lowered the ramp, shedding snow all over the floor as he lowered McKay to one of the jumper's seats and then turned back around.
"Hey ..." Sheppard was leaning on a bulkhead, pale and shaking. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to find Armstrong before it gets completely dark." The ramp closed behind him, cutting off the light along with Sheppard's protest.
He paused for a moment, knee-deep in snow, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. It was not fully dark yet; he could still see a little, and he did not switch on the light of his P90 -- not yet, not unless he had to.
Sheppard was probably right to protest. Caldwell was injured himself, and leaving two badly injured men alone in the puddlejumper. But he had to do this. For his crew, for his ship, for himself. Armstrong had shattered Caldwell's faith in his people -- in his own ability to judge character, as well. For his own sake, as well as to give closure to the deaths of those whose lives had been lost, he had to bring this whole thing full circle.
Eyes half-closed against the driving snow, he began to walk, into the teeth of the wind.
------
During his time in Antarctica, Sheppard had suffered through at least a half-dozen cold-weather survival courses, usually pretending to pay attention while reading a year-old copy of Gun & Ammo tucked inside a training pamphlet. And he'd participated in rescue efforts, even watched from the corner of his eye as field medics rewarmed lost, hypothermic servicemen in the back of the helicopter he was flying. He knew the basics: warm the body's core first, no jarring or rough handling, warm fluids and sugar if they can swallow ...
And strangely, all of it seemed to have gone straight out of his head when confronted with a limp, unresponsive Rodney who felt like an ice cube to the touch. He'd been confronted with a hypothermic Rodney once before, after rescuing him from the sunken puddlejumper, but that had been a very mildly hypothermic and, more importantly, conscious Rodney, and Zelenka had handled most of it anyway -- getting him into dry clothes, wrapping him in a blanket and then just keeping him from wandering all over the jumper criticizing their rescue efforts until they could hand him off to Beckett back on Atlantis. The main problem had been getting him to shut up and stop telling them about the fifty different, better ways of rescuing him that he'd come up with underwater.
This cold, fragile, pale version of Rodney scared the hell out of Sheppard. All he wanted right now was for Rodney to wake up and tell him that he was rescuing him wrong.
The puddlejumper's standard emergency equipment included sleeping bags and thermal blankets. Limping heavily on a leg that would barely hold him, Sheppard began unloading supplies from the bins above and below the seats. He unrolled a sleeping bag on the floor and was then faced with the unpleasant task of peeling a limp and exceedingly unhelpful Rodney out of his clothing. The outer layers were frozen solid, the inner layers soaked and clinging damply to his cold skin. Sheppard dried him off as best he could, wincing at the technicolor bruise that spread across Rodney's chest -- obviously the impact of a bullet on the vest; he'd had those before himself -- before wrapping him in a thermal blanket and sleeping bag on the floor. Rodney's hair clung to his forehead in damp and bloody spikes, and Sheppard realized that on top of all the bruises, there was some kind of head wound as well. It wasn't bleeding much at the moment, perhaps an actual side benefit of the hypothermia. Sheppard did a quick patch job with the first-aid kit supplies, but he was a lot more worried about getting Rodney warm than dealing with his superficial injuries. The scientist's skin was pale and cold as ice. Sliding his hand down Rodney's bare arm inside the sleeping bag, Sheppard felt no heat in him, none at all. It was like touching a dead man. He spread his fingers across Rodney's chest, reassured by the slight movement that his friend still drew breath.
The Antarctic rescues in which he'd participated had had equipment that the puddlejumpers did not. A warm-air ventilator would come in particular handy right about now. The jumper's first-aid kit did contain an IV, but Sheppard didn't have the foggiest clue how to insert it, and figured he'd better not try.
A wave of dizziness washed over him and Sheppard found himself sitting on one of the bench seats with his head in his hands, not really sure how he'd gotten there. He became aware of an expanding pool of blood underneath his right foot, not to mention that his leg hurt like fucking hell. When he tried to get up to get to the first aid kit, he nearly took a header on top of Rodney.
Great. Just great. This was just a beautiful day, in so many ways.
He took off his pants and dropped them in a crumpled heap -- they were soaked with melted snow and blood. His right leg was a mess of blood from mid-thigh to below the knee; in places he could see skin hanging down like shredded paper. He couldn't think how to begin to clean it; he didn't even know where to touch it, and the pain was hammering a spike behind his eyes. Screw it all, he thought, and wrapped the hell out of it with most of the remaining bandages in the first-aid kit. The important thing was to stop the blood loss; Beckett could sort out the rest later. There were oral antibiotics in the kit. He checked the dosage and dry-swallowed some. Then he sat for a moment and stared at the morphine auto-injectors. Yeah, it'd knock him on his ass, but right now he could hardly think because of the pain. If he had to choose between being fuzzy-headed from pain or from morphine, he might as well take the more comfortable option.
The tingling rush came almost immediately, a warm feeling not unlike fatigue that seeped through his veins and chased the pain to a small corner of his mind. Sheppard got up, swayed and caught himself on the side of the jumper. He took a small, experimental step and found that, although his leg wanted to buckle, it didn't feel like someone was pounding spikes through it every time he took a step.
So far so good.
"So how you doing down there, McKay?" He bent over Rodney and slipped a hand inside the sleeping bag to check on him. Still ice-cold. He remembered vaguely that hypothermic people couldn't generate enough heat to warm themselves back up, once they stopped shivering. Or maybe that was just something his buddies on McMurdo used to say, some sort of urban legend thing. He really should have paid more attention to those first aid courses. And maybe taking the morphine had been a mistake; this would all be much easier if he could think straight.
Sheppard sat down next to Rodney on the floor. McKay needed to be warmed up, core first, and Sheppard didn't really have any way to apply heat to him other than the standard movie treatment for hypothermia. Which he'd never seen anybody actually do in real life, and was probably a stupid idea, not to mention embarrassing as hell.
Still ...
Rodney was unconscious, Caldwell was gone ... it wasn't like anyone was ever going to find out about this. He didn't know what else to do, and the idea of sitting around and letting Rodney die when he could do something to help him, but wouldn't due to embarrassment -- how could he ever face himself in the mirror again? Frankly he'd rather throw himself on a live grenade than crawl inside a sleeping bag with a mostly naked teammate. If only there was a grenade handy.
Rodney's shallow breathing hitched slightly, and Sheppard groaned to himself, and peeled off his jacket and shirt. If Rodney woke up in the middle of this, Sheppard had every intention of smacking him unconscious again.
Rodney was shockingly cold, especially when touching him with bare skin. That was probably just as well, though, because in Sheppard's opinion, cuddling with a mostly-naked McKay should not be in any way a comfortable experience. He wrapped his arms around Rodney and proceeded to squirm, shift and try every possible angle until concluding that there really was no comfortable way to do this, especially while trying to have as little physical contact with Rodney as was possible while trapped in a sleeping bag with the man. When they got back, he was definitely putting in a request with the SGC for a beautiful 25-year-old female astrophysicist. Did Carter have a little sister?
There was another of those little hitches in Rodney's breathing and for a moment, he actually seemed to stop breathing. Sheppard froze in an instant of numbing terror, and then he was afraid to move again, afraid that one more twist or jostle was going to be the one that stopped Rodney's heart.
The arm that was currently jammed underneath Rodney's shoulder had already started going numb. Sheppard wriggled, as gently as he could, into a less painful position, with one arm tucked under Rodney's neck so that they rested forehead-to-forehead, practically breathing the same air.
This had better goddamn work. He was torn between wanting to see those blue eyes flutter open, and wanting Rodney to stay safely unconscious for the next couple hours and never, ever find out about this as long as he lived. Leaning heavily towards the latter option.
He really didn't mean to fall asleep. For one thing, falling asleep in Rodney McKay's arms was pretty high on his list of Top Ten Things I Never Want To Do in the Pegasus Galaxy; for another, he kinda needed to stay awake to make sure that the irritating SOB kept breathing, and then there was the whole "keeping an eye out for Armstrong" thing. But he hadn't slept in nearly two days (passing out didn't count), had been running on adrenaline for much of that time, and had just dosed himself on heavy-duty painkillers. The nearly unbearable pain in his leg had faded into a muzzy, drowsy feeling, and Rodney's icebox-like chill was actually starting to warm up a little bit.
For the first time since the Daedalus had dropped off their screens, he felt the tension in his body uncoil. For the first time, he felt that they might actually, all of them, have a pretty good shot at getting out of this.
Maybe it was okay to sleep, for just a little while.
So he did.
------
A blast of Arctic air swirled into the jumper, ruffled Sheppard's hair and jolted him out of his drowsy state into dazed and uncomprehending wakefulness. For a moment he just lay perfectly still, assessing the situation. He was cold, but not as cold as he felt, for some reason, that he really should be. He couldn't feel his left arm and a dull throbbing had begun in the general vicinity of his right leg.
He reached instinctively for where his gun should be, touched bandages and recoiled from a jolt of pain. No gun. Crap. His head snapped up, and then he realized that the figure unbundling in front of the jumper's floor heaters was Caldwell.
Memory returned, and with it, a gigantic load of embarrassment. Sheppard pushed himself up on arms that trembled slightly with fatigue and residual weakness from being so cold. He didn't think he'd been asleep very long; his head ached and the jumper did slow loopy rolls around him. Definitely avoiding the morphine in the future. He looked down at Rodney, noticed that a little color was starting to come back into the physicist's white face. Then he looked up to see that Caldwell, stripped down to a T-shirt, was looking at him.
"Er ... this isn't what it looks like."
Caldwell's expression was faintly amused. "It looks like you're trying to warm up a hypothermic team member with your body heat."
"Oh. Well, then, I guess it is what it looks like." Fighting off fatigue and morphine-induced wooziness, Sheppard extricated himself with some amount of difficulty from the octopus-like clutches of Rodney and the sleeping bag. His pants ... aw, hell, they were in a bloody, sticky pile on the floor, and he'd rather be fed on by Wraith than try to put them back on. He dug through the jumper's cargo bins until he found a pair of coveralls and gingerly pulled them over his injured leg. There was a dry jacket too. Would wonders never cease. After getting himself dressed, Sheppard sank down onto one of the bench seats and scrubbed his hands through his hair, trying to get his brain moving again. It seemed that there was something he needed to ask about, something important. Eventually he figured out what it was. "Armstrong?"
"Gone," Caldwell said simply. He peeled off his gloves and laid them on top of the jumper's heater vents, where they began to steam. After a moment he added, "I found the place where you found with him. Found a few zip ties that'd been cut through. He must've had a knife on him. I didn't find any guns, so he's probably still got those."
"I took his 9-mil." The P90, though ... damn. He really hadn't been thinking straight.
Caldwell sat down across from Sheppard and worked at the frozen laces of his boots. "You should have killed him."
Sheppard leaned his head back against the wall. "Thank you for telling me what I already knew. I'm sure Ronon's gonna read me the riot act, too. And you know what? I don't really give a damn. Yeah, the bastard tried to kill me, tried to kill us all, and I still couldn't blow him away, not tied up and helpless. I know it's stupid. But I couldn't."
Caldwell didn't say anything as he pried off his boots. Sheppard reached over his head and snagged another set of coveralls, which he tossed in Caldwell's direction. The Colonel caught them without speaking. Sheppard pushed himself up off the bench and limped up to the pilot's chair to check on their power consumption. Low, he found. They weren't even running the cloak at the moment, so the only thing drawing power was the heater and lights. He dialed down the heat a little -- between the heaters and the melting snow, it was like being in a sauna -- and set the jumper in lockdown mode, so that no one could enter it from outside. Should've done it before, but well ... he'd had other things on his mind.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Caldwell looking down at Rodney on the floor. "How's McKay?"
"Alive." He thought about adding No thanks to you, but realized that his initial flare of anger at Caldwell had died away. The man had made a bad mistake. From the look on his face, he knew that. Maybe if Caldwell hadn't just saved both their lives, it would be easier to stay mad at him. At the moment, he was just too damn tired. He slumped down into the pilot's chair.
Caldwell looked at him, then nodded a little, and looked away. "Don't know about you, but I could use some food." He stood and reached with his good arm into the overhead bin that contained the jumper's food supplies -- mostly MREs and a few freeze-dried items for variety.
Sheppard pushed himself up again and limped back to the jumper seats. "Hang on. I've got something better than MREs."
Hopefully they'd restocked after the last trip ... He opened up the cargo bin under one specific jumper seat (it was marked with a teeny-tiny "X") and pulled out a large coil of rope, behind which they kept what they'd all started calling the goodie box. He dragged it out and began to unload it. The first items on top were a little Sterno stove, an electric hot-water maker and a large box of hot cocoa, those being the items most commonly used on their overnight offworld excursions.
Caldwell stared. "You keep hot cocoa in the puddlejumper?"
Sheppard felt a bit defensive. "You know, we do spend a lot of time on long trips in the jumpers, and we all figured out a long time ago that it's better to be comfortable."
The exact contents of the goodie box varied depending on what the Daedalus had brought on the last run and what Sheppard or one of his team had managed to abscond with from the cafeteria or elsewhere. At the moment, it contained a number of different varieties of dried soups and ramen, packages of cookies, makings for s'mores, bathing suits and sunscreen, paper cups, a little RC car and a few board games.
Caldwell's eyebrows went up a little bit more at each additional item. "Your team does ... work occasionally, right, Sheppard?"
"You're allowed to share in our bounty only if you keep our secret, sir." He filled the electric teakettle with water from the jumper's emergency supply, dumped in a package of soup and plugged it into an outlet under the jumper's dash. Thanks to Rodney and Zelenka, all the jumpers had a number of standard North American-style outlets wired on top of the Ancient outlets, ostensibly for plugging in laptops but in reality used for a variety of other things as well.
Caldwell hadn't said anything yet, so Sheppard looked up to find the Colonel watching him with a very slight grin. "I do wonder about you sometimes, Sheppard. All of you." He shook his head, easing the dry coveralls over his bound arm. "But it works. Somehow, it works."
"Yes, sir," Sheppard said quietly, looking down at Rodney. All that was visible of him at the moment was a few tousled spikes of brown hair.
"In case it wasn't obvious, Sheppard -- no, I don't plan on ratting you out. Is that soup hot yet?"
------
Rodney floated.
He'd drifted towards consciousness briefly, found a sleeping Sheppard wrapped around him, and after a moment of utter panic, decided that his dreams had taken a definite turn for the bizarre even compared to the whole Sam Carter thing, and drifted off again. Since then, he'd faded in and out enough times to have figured out, more or less, what was going on, and decided that pretending to have been asleep the whole time and never, ever speaking of this again was definitely the only honorable choice under the circumstances.
Not really asleep, but not really awake either, he listened to the comforting murmur of Caldwell and Sheppard's voices without trying to understand the words. Somewhere on the edge of awareness, pain lapped at him, but he didn't care to wake up enough to figure out what was hurting or why. He wasn't scared and running anymore; on some deep level, he felt safe and content, and he understood, in some part of him beyond words or consciousness, that Sheppard's presence had a lot to do with that. Of all the changes that Atlantis had wrought in him, this was perhaps the one that amazed him most -- even beyond his late-discovered capacity for heroism, because really, Rodney had always suspected that he could be brave and selfless; he was just too smart most of the time. But the idea that he could trust, beyond all logic or reason ... this would never in a million years have occurred to him. Being heroic, well, there were all kinds of good reasons for that, not the least being that it made sense to save his own ass along with everyone else's, and it brought much-deserved accolades as well. But trusting people could never do anything other than hurt you. Or so he'd always thought. And yet then there were times like this, when trust could fold around you and chase away the cold.
He owed his life to Sheppard for about the umpteenth gazillion time. And yet he'd stopped keeping score long ago. Rodney's world was, and had always been, made up of quantifiables, things that could be measured and counted and tallied. Yet this ... this could not be couched in such terms. He'd tried to, at first. You save my life, I save yours ... but after a certain point, after so many such exchanges, it didn't make any sense to keep track anymore.
The thought occurred to him, distantly, that he really must be out of it, to be musing about such things.
A hand cupped under the back of his head, startling him halfway out of his comfortable daze. The fingers were callused but unexpectedly gentle, and so was the voice. "Hey, Rodney, wakey-wakey."
Now that he was a little more awake, he realized that the pain was coming from ... pretty much everywhere. Mainly his hands and feet -- burning, tingly pain -- and a stabby pain in his head ... and thank you so much to Sheppard for jarring it. He mustered enough energy to mumble, "'m sleepin'. Go away."
"No can do, sorry. Think it might be a good idea to get something hot into you. I've got a cup of soup here; want some?"
He felt shaky and nauseous, in a way that could either mean he was starving or about to throw up. Maybe both. "Not really."
The hand under his head raised him up a little higher and a knee was wedged under his shoulders. "Great! Here."
"You don't listen, do you? Ow." The edge of the cup bumped against his bottom lip, which at some point had gotten bruised and split -- maybe the avalanche, maybe falling into the river; he was really losing track of where all the damage came from.
"You know, you look like hell, Rodney."
Rodney cracked an eye open. All he could really see of Sheppard was a dark, scruffy-haired silhouette. "You try going through what I've been through and see what you look like, Colonel."
"We've all got our problems, McKay. Drink up."
The cup tilted against his lips and he swallowed a few small gulps of the hot soup, at which point his stomach decided that it was, after all, nausea and not hunger that he was feeling. He raised a hand shakily, pushing the cup away.
"That's all you want?"
"Unless you want to be wearing it, Colonel."
Sheppard snorted and let Rodney's head back down to the sleeping bag. "Fine, more for the rest of us."
"Who's 'us'? Don't tell me Ronon and Teyla are here too?" Something nagged at his memory. He'd asked about them before. But he couldn't remember the answer.
"No, Ronon's on the Daedalus and Teyla's back in Atlantis. Nobody here but us Colonels, Rodney."
It took him a minute to parse this. "Oh. Caldwell."
"Yeah. He's asleep at the moment. Hang on a sec; I'm going to get you some water."
Little rustles as Sheppard withdrew. Rodney pushed himself up on his elbows, closing his eyes against a rush of dizziness and then opening them again. The lights in the jumper were dimmed, and he realized that he must have fallen asleep, because the last thing he remembered with any clarity was listening to Caldwell and Sheppard talking. Caldwell was now curled up on one of the jumper's bench seats with a sleeping bag wrapped around him. Sheppard returned from the front of the jumper's cabin, limping heavily. Rodney watched him ease himself carefully to the floor without bending his leg.
"Okay, what did you do to yourself this time, Colonel?"
"Hand-to-hand combat against Lassie's meaner big brother. Here, brought you some Tylenol too."
Rodney stared at him. "You fought one of those wolf things with your bare hands?"
"Bare hands and a P90. It helped. Here, take your meds."
Rodney accepted the Tylenol and a cup of water, noticing the slight tremor in Sheppard's hands that matched his own. Glancing up at the Colonel's face, he noticed that Sheppard didn't look much better than he himself felt. There was a nasty bruise across his jaw, another under his eye, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks.
"Oh," Sheppard said to himself, and heaved himself up off the floor again, limping industriously back towards the front of the jumper. Rodney sighed and took the pills with a few cautious sips of water. His queasiness seemed to be abating slightly as his body adjusted to the whole idea of having food around again. In fact, it seemed to be wanting more. His head still hurt; he reached up to touch his forehead and discovered that a bandage had materialized there, apparently during one of his unconscious periods.
Sheppard limped back and settled down on the floor again, his back against the jumper's seat. He was carrying two cups that steamed slightly. Rodney accepted one of them warily, then with more enthusiasm as he smelled the familiar and welcome aroma of hot cocoa. "Hey, you broke into the goodie box."
"What better time?" Sheppard tossed a small, squarish object into Rodney's lap: a Hershey bar. Rodney pounced on it in delight. "I would have made s'mores," Sheppard added, leaning his head back against the bench seat and sliding down so that he wasn't resting against Caldwell's leg. "But have you ever tried s'mores made over a can of Sterno? Not the world's greatest taste treat."
"Why doesn't it surprise me that you have." Rodney rested his aching head against the opposite jumper seat and nibbled on the chocolate. He had to keep setting down the cup of cocoa; though it wasn't more than mildly warm, the heat felt scorching on his hyper-sensitive fingers. He felt too tired to even complain about it, though. With each sip of the cocoa, warmth seeped outward to spread down his limbs. However, various concerns were niggling at his sense of well-being. Finally his worries rose to the surface and jumped on him from several directions. His head snapped up with a violent flinch. Sheppard, who looked as if he'd been nodding off with his cup of cocoa resting on his chest, jumped.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Wraith worshippers!" Rodney gasped. "Elizabeth! Zelenka! Cadman! Oh, God!"
"Whoa ... calm down." Sheppard leaned over to plant a hand in the center of his chest and push him back down. "Just take some deep breaths and hear my story."
As he talked, he pulled down another sleeping bag and stretched out on the floor, one arm propping up his head. Rodney listened with only a few interruptions, sipping on his cooling cocoa while Sheppard told him about the puddlejumper rescue party, about retrieving Cadman and Seavey from the storm and sending Elizabeth and Zelenka back to Atlantis on the jumpers with Beckett.
"Ronon stayed behind on the Daedalus in case Armstrong and Ludwick had friends. I figure if anyone can handle a few Wraith worshippers, he can."
"Get lost in a blizzard for just a few hours and everything changes ..." Rodney murmured sleepily, slouching down in his sleeping bag. The sense of well-being had returned full force. There was still a deep, nagging worry about Elizabeth and Zelenka, combined with guilt that he hadn't done as much as he could have. But mostly, he was just happy. The Tylenol had finally kicked in, and he even had chocolate.
Sheppard laughed a little, drained his cup of cocoa and laid his head down on his arm. "Excuse us all for not putting our lives on hold 'till you got back, McKay."
"Excused," Rodney mumbled. He was aware that the conversation had begun to degenerate into one that didn't make a whole lot of sense, but then, it wouldn't be the first time with the two of them. "Hey ..." He realized that there was one question that hadn't yet been raised, and dragged himself back from the brink of sleep to ask it. "Say, do we need to stay awake to look out for a very angry Armstrong coming back and trying to break into the puddlejumper?"
"No, I've --" Sheppard broke off for a jaw-cracking yawn. "... I've locked it down; there's no way he could possibly get in. Even if he empties his P90 into the hull, it's a spaceship. It's designed to withstand minor asteroid strikes. A bazooka might hurt us, but not anything that he's got."
"Well, why are you still awake, then?"
"Insomnia, that's all," and as the blatant lie was interrupted by another yawn, Rodney realized Sheppard must have been waiting for him to regain consciousness.
"Well, go to sleep then ... moron."
"You too." The words were a whisper, and followed almost immediately by snoring. Sheppard must have been exhausted. Rodney carefully set his mostly-empty cup on the floor and nestled down inside the sleeping bag, sinking slowly into the warmth that beckoned him.
------
TBC