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Dirt for Somehowunbroken
Tears for Elfycat

Dirt

The grenade explosion hadn't even been that close, but Rodney, in his wisdom, had run towards it, despite John's shout.

Now he lay face down in the mud, his whole body one big throbbing ache and his ears ringing mercilessly.

His sight dimmed, like the sun had decided to set early, even though he knew it was still high in the sky. Then he realised that he wasn't breathing. A cough and a splutter kick started his protesting diaphragm to stop striking and back to work again. He blew out across the ground where his nose was pressed to the muck and the smaller particles lying on the ground with him skittered away from his warm breath.

Then his mind began to work again and to his scientific mind, it wasn't just dirt or mud he was lying on, but constituent elements that were also crawling with bacteria and microbes.

It wasn't therefore Sheppard's tugging that got him back on his feet, or the Wraith that had only been slowed by the grenade explosion, but his flinching to get away from the horrible diseases the earth he was inhaling was giving to him.

He staggered upright, wincing at his bruises.

"You alright, McKay?"

He coughed again. "Not really, but I'm sure the incurable ailment caused by sucking in alien dirt will have an incubation time longer than the time that it takes for the Wraith to kill us."

John gave him a half smirk and pulled his arm as they continued to run towards the gate where Teyla and Ronon were already waiting for them.

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(Bored to) Tears

Despite popular opinion, being the Chief Scientist and part of the primary recon team on Atlantis was not all fun, excitement and life threatening stress all the time.

Sometimes there was monotony: cataloguing artefacts, decoding or writing never ending lines of code (hello, Replicators).

So here Rodney was, tablet in hand, standing in the middle of a large room they had found on Atlantis. Shelves lined the walls and on those shelves there were hundreds, if not thousands of small Ancient doodads and knick-knacks. It had been exciting at first - personal shields or cloaks! But after a week, it was not so much any more.

Rodney and his fellow scientists had found that most of the objects were useless toys and trinkets and as Rodney carefully tested and catalogued each one, his heart, once high, now fell.

Was it possible to die of boredom? He asked himself as he turned a small glowing ball over in his hand.

His eyes prickled with tiredness and he blinked a few times to clear them. The glow got brighter and a small high-pitched whine began to emanate from the latest object.

He hummed in surprise. He had scanned it already and deemed it safe... or had he? His mind froze at the same time as his tired body when he realised in fear that maybe he hadn't scanned this one before picking it up. He quickly put it back down on the shelf, hoping that if it was no longer in contact with his gene activating touch, it would shut off, but he was wrong and the whine increased.

He backed away nervously. His minions had already left for the day, so he was alone.

Just then, the whine stopped, but the light flared and there was a loud bang. Rodney stumbled blindly and shut his eyes tightly where they watered. His sight gradually returned and he laughed shakily as he picked up his tablet computer from where he'd dropped it to instinctively duck and cover.

He added a new entry and ran a quick scan for posterity before writing:
Ancient Stun Grenade - possible military use. Refer to Lt. Col. Sheppard and test recharge capability.

He called it a night then, hoping his attention span would be better the next morning when the same work began again.