The team have set up their camp and at least found some berries to eat. But what's going on between Rodney and John? John certainly doesn't know...

Chapter 3 - Contact

John had never been allowed pets when he was growing up. So he'd been lucky that, when they were staying at his family's ranch house, rather than in the city, or by the ocean, the head groom had had a couple of dogs that he could play with. And of course there were the horses.

But when they were at the apartment in the city, John had had to do without his animal friends. There'd been a boy, however, a couple of floors down, who had a hamster. The little creature would sit all hunched over into a ball, holding a nut or a seed or a piece of fruit in its tiny hands, and it would nibble rapidly, its bright eyes intent on its meal. The hamster's name had been Dave, which had amused John and intensely irritated his brother.

Rodney reminded John of Dave. Not his stuffed-shirt of a brother, but hamster-Dave. At the moment, Rodney's eyes weren't particularly bright, even in the flickering firelight of a hot, deadwood fire - the light cast deep shadows of exhaustion around his eyes. But he sat hunched over in exactly the same way as Dave the hamster, focussing on the berries in his hands with the same twitchy intensity, chewing them with thorough, rapid movements of his jaws, swallowing and licking his fingers to get every last fleeting calorie out of his meagre meal.

At one time John had wondered why watching Rodney eat was so fascinating. Was it his single-mindedness? Was it the way he was so staggeringly selfish about sharing? Or was it the fact that Rodney was so open and unashamed about the pleasure he took from food? He put everything on display, whereas John would never, could never do likewise. But John had stopped wondering a long time ago and just accepted that he liked watching his friend eat.

He wasn't hungry himself. He'd had a couple of berries, but he'd felt like throwing them up again, so he didn't have any more.

Teyla had eaten and fallen asleep and Ronon was curled around her, not asleep because John could see his eyes gleaming along with the gleams of light on the silvery blanket that was wrapped around them both.

Rodney stuck a finger in his mouth, fished around his back teeth and then flicked away a seed.

"Jennifer will be frantic," he said. "She always worries when I go off world. And she said we shouldn't trust Todd. 'Something'll go wrong,' she said. And she was right, wasn't she? We shouldn't have trusted him and he betrayed us and now we're stuck here." He popped in another berry. "Did I tell you Jen wants me to quit the team?"

"Yeah," said John.

"And I said no. No, I said, I'm not quitting the team. My team needs me. I'm indispensable. And you know what she said? Do you? Sheppard?"

"No."

"She said that maybe I was indispensable to her. 'Have you thought about that, Rodney?' she said. 'That maybe I can't do without you!' What do you think of that?"

John shrugged. It seemed like the berries had done the trick with Rodney's blood sugar. He should sleep now. John would keep watch. "You sleep," he said. "I'll watch."

"Oh. Well. I'll try, I suppose. Even though it's freezing cold and I might just drift off into a hypoglycemic coma and nobody would notice. Jen keeps glucose tablets on her nightstand, just in case - did I tell you that? In case I go hypo during the night."

John didn't reply. The firelight hurt his eyes.

"I mean, she didn't have to take the cookies away - they did the job more pleasurably than glucose tablets." He yawned and his silver blanket rustled as he stretched. "She doesn't like crumbs in the bed, though. And I have to admit, I'm inclined to agree. Crumbs can get in uncomfortable places when you're, uh, you know…"

John did know, although he would have preferred not to. Rodney was always going on about him and Keller. Maybe that's just what couples did - bore on about each other to anyone who'd listen. John didn't get why Rodney thought he wanted to hear it, though.

"I feel sorry for them. Not as sorry as I feel for myself, obviously, but sorry enough." Rodney shuffled nearer to the fire and lay down, smoothing the silver blanket over his body and reaching around to jam it in beneath his back and legs. "Amelia, Kanaan, little Torren… They'll all be so worried." Rodney wriggled and huffed out a breath as he closed his eyes. "It's all right for you. You don't have to worry about anyone worrying over you."

John pushed himself more upright against the tree at his back. Rodney's eyes were shut, so John allowed himself a silent wince, both at the pain in his body and the pain Rodney's words caused. No. He didn't have anyone to worry over him.

"You can get yourself lost, cut off on an alien planet with even less hope of rescue than last time - because they knew where we were last time. It just took them a while to get to us - a long while to persuade the IOA that we were worth three months' effort, ploughing through a massive asteroid belt - and that was only because of Zelenka's really quite snappy way of harvesting the best bits of the asteroids as they were going along. Anyway, as I said, it's all right for you. Jen's probably worried sick." Rodney huffed a few more deep breaths, smacked his lips, and his body relaxed and his breaths deepened.

He'd been doing that more and more - saying stuff that cut really deep, that hacked away at John's insecurities. Of course, Rodney had always been kind of a jerk, and that was putting it mildly. But he was John's jerk - John's best friend jerk and they could be assholes together and rile each other up in a way that they both understood, but, it had to be admitted, could sometimes look pretty hostile to an outsider. But lately, and John wasn't sure exactly when it had started, Rodney seemed to have forgotten the rules. And John very, very rarely admitted to himself that he had feelings at all, but even he was beginning to suspect that his much-denied feelings were considerably hurt by some of the shit that McKay had come out with recently.

And it was weird, because if he wasn't having a go at John it was all, 'Jennifer said this' and 'Jennifer said that' and even shit like 'Did I tell you that Jen's getting a new dress shipped out on the Daedalus and she says it's going to knock my socks off?' Rodney hadn't actually popped the question yet, but John had no doubt that soon he'd be forced to listen to how many tiers Keller thought their cake should have and whether she was going for white or ivory. For fuck's sake.

Anyway, he wouldn't now. Because Rodney couldn't propose while they were stranded here, could he? So that was that.

John let a very small, vicious smile curl his lips before he squashed down his bitter triumph and replaced it with the things that really mattered, i.e. staying alive and making contact with the locals.

Staying alive involved staying warm, and his team seemed okay in that respect but John was becoming more and more chilled. The cold was seeping up from the earth and a savage little breeze was attacking his still faintly damp clothes, sending shivers across his skin. He blew on his numb fingertips and then wrapped his arms around his body, shoving his hands into opposite armpits.

But sitting still was just no good. John really didn't want to move, though. His body was so stiff and his head ached so much. Nevertheless, he uncurled and pushed himself slowly up, holding onto the thin tree trunk. And once the throbbing in his head and the wave of nausea had settled to reasonable levels he didn't feel much worse than he had sitting down - injured ribs always hurt like total bastards no matter what position you put yourself in.

He couldn't straighten up properly for a minute, though, and not just because of his throbbing head - a couple of twinges either side of his abdomen told him that his old injuries weren't appreciating the cold. And his arm was getting stiff - a reminder of the axe wound he'd got last time he was on this planet. Oh well. Scar tissue was like that sometimes. It was nothing to worry about.

He stepped up and down in place and flapped his arms a bit.

It had been cold that first night, when he and Rodney had been stranded here before. They'd been way down on the southern end of the island then, though. The activation of the Gate had triggered some pretty serious seismic activity and the whole shebang had tumbled down a massive crack in the rocky cliff top. It was like the planet had had it with visitors and just decided to eat the Gate. And the DHD. Swallow them up and not even go to the trouble of spitting them back out.

And he and Rodney had just had to suck it up and walk away.

They hadn't been on the best of terms then either, a sequence of disasters and the loss of one of Rodney's scientists (through John's orders) had led to a certain amount of ill feeling - understatement. And then a mission had really gone south and John had been captured and tortured and he still didn't like to think about that. But sometimes he did, because his fingers still ached sometimes, where they'd been broken.

Anyway, that first night he'd fixed a rough shelter beneath the overhang of a rock and Rodney had gone to sleep in it and John had sat on the rock to keep watch and felt like shit.

Just like he felt now. So what the hell had gone wrong in the intervening years? Why hadn't he learnt, matured, gained some wisdom or something? Why did he always end up getting the people he was supposed to be protecting into these stupid, fucked-up situations? Sometimes it seemed like no matter what he did he ended up hurt, alone and having to deal with the consequences of yet more failure. Maybe his Dad had been right all along.

Shit. Shit, John, that's not helping. Pull your goddam, shit-shower self together. Get a fucking grip.

Was that his own voice or his father's? John blinked. And were those his friends, asleep around the campfire, or were they the bodies of people who'd died on his watch - Sumner, Markham, Holland, all the rest?

John was trembling, like he'd been dunked in the icy waves again. He took a step back and stumbled over the rough grass. Firelit branches and black star-speckled sky swooped around him. His legs collapsed and he crumpled to the ground and couldn't stop himself slumping sideways, and then grass stalks were prickling the side of his face.

He was supposed to be keeping watch. He was supposed to be watching over his friends, guarding them from any danger. And he couldn't even do that. He wouldn't hear any stealthy approach over the rapid pounding of his own heart and wouldn't see any dangers because his vision was blurred from the shaking of his body and the salty seawater which still lingered on his face. And he'd wiped that away. He'd wiped it away, so why was it still there, getting in his eyes, stopping him from doing his job, from doing his duty?

He'd have to tell them. John would have to warn his team, warn Ronon and Teyla and Rodney that he couldn't look after them, that he'd failed them again. Wake up. Wake up. I can't do it. I can't do it any more. He tried to call out, but he couldn't hear his own voice. He'd failed even at that.

And then, suddenly, he was warmer. And he struggled, because everyone knew that was how it went - you were seriously chilled, you stopped shivering and then you felt all cosy and nice and just drifted away and never woke up.

He needed to get up, move around, flap his arms, stamp his feet.

But there was warmth at his back and a heavy weight of warmth over his chest and the stabbing gusts of bitter breeze down his neck had changed to warm, rhythmic puffs. And the voice in his head - which was a blend of his father's derision and his COs' anger and his own weary acceptance of failure - had changed into a soft murmur of rumbling nonsense.

John gave in. He let the warmth and the softness take him. And that was wrong too, because he'd never been able to accept those things in life, so why should death be any different?

He was still alive. He must be, because there was pain. And there was a cold patch on his back where there'd been warmth. The harsh, white light of early morning jabbed at his eyes. John closed them and swallowed. He shivered and there was a metallic rustle - one of the emergency blankets was wrapped around him. They only had two. Who had given theirs up?

"You realise we're all going to be doing purple poops today, of course."

"Mmfuhyuhwah?"

"Purple. Poops. Because of all the berries."

"Uh." John pushed himself very slowly upright, keeping his head down and his eyes closed until he thought he had a reasonable chance of not passing out. He raised his head and opened his eyes and didn't pass out.

"You look like shit."

"M'fine."

"Of course you're fine," said Rodney.

He sat on one of the blankets. A trickle of purple juice ran down his chin. The fire crackled and spat and smoked. Someone had put green wood on it. There was no sign of Ronon or Teyla.

"Mushrooms," remarked Rodney.

"What?"

"That's where they went. Ronon went to find the luxury bathroom suite, and when he came back he said he'd seen some mushrooms and he wanted Teyla to see them too - to confirm his opinion that they'll be a tasty, nutritious breakfast for us, rather than bringing our lives to an abrupt and painful end."

"Oh. Are they okay?"

"I think so. Ronon cut himself a stick to lean on. And Teyla seems okay. She had some Tylenol."

"Are you okay?"

Rodney's cheek was swollen and he was pale. His clothes were stained with patches of dried salt.

"Hm. Well, I'll just have to be, won't I?" He scrutinised another berry and then rejected it, tossing it into the fire. "We'll all just have to be. You see, I've been trying not to let myself dwell too much on the fact that this is probably it for us. But I can't help it - dwelling, I mean. Because, you know we'll probably never be rescued, don't you? We'll probably never be rescued, because nobody will have the slightest clue where we are. They won't even know where to start looking. So at some point, I'm going to have to accept the fact that I'll never see Jennifer again. And that when she's got over losing me, she'll marry someone else and have inferior children rather than my superior offspring. And Teyla - well, she'll have to accept that she'll never see her son again. Which, even I, with my notorious self-centredness, can see will be considerably more difficult to deal with than my predicament. Ronon might do okay - who knows? He's pretty adaptable. And at least this time his partner has been torn away from him by a couple of bad decisions rather than by the Wraith."

"Rodney, please don't." The words tore themselves from John's chest.

Rodney looked at him, the hard lines of his mouth slowly drooping, his eyes huge and shadow-lined and lost. Then his mouth snapped shut, he cleared his throat and looked down at his lap. "Yes. Well," he croaked. And then mumbled, "Can't sit around here all day."

He shot to his feet, snatching up the foil blanket and stuffing it into a pocket on his vest.

"I'm going to see if they've decided about the mushrooms."

He spun around just as Ronon emerged from the brush, leaning heavily on a thick, roughly snapped-off branch. And behind him was Teyla, the fingertips of one hand stained with berry juice, the other tucked into her vest. Neither held any mushrooms.

"Ah, Conan," said Rodney. "Poisonous, then? No tartine aux champignons for my petit déjeuner? Well, that's a shame, because I -"

Ronon interrupted him. "There's someone out there. More than one. Circling around us."

John pushed off the silver blanket and sat up straighter. "Animals? People?"

"People."

A shiver ran between John's shoulder blades. He remained sitting on the ground. "McKay." Rodney's eyes were twitching around the clearing, his hand straying toward his sidearm.

"What?"

"Sit down. Act casual."

Ronon and Teyla sat down facing the campfire and Rodney joined them.

"We need to make friends," said John, quietly. "Whoever they are, we don't want them seeing us as a threat."

"Yes, yes - it's not as if we're novices at the whole first contact thing, Sheppard," snapped Rodney. "And it's not even first contact. I'm sure they'll remember us." He rubbed his unshaven jaw. "You know, they've probably made at least one statue in my honour by now - I did improve their defences quite considerably, if you recall."

John recalled Rodney nearly coming to blows with the smith at the hill fort. Which wouldn't have ended well. The smith had some impressively destructive tools at his disposal.

"Yeah, well, let's just play it cool until we know who we're dealing with."

A twig snapped behind him and Ronon and Teyla's eyes snapped to the source. John shuffled around, struggling to keep his features impassive as his chest and side flared with pain and all the aches of a long night on the cold ground made themselves known.

Vague brown shapes moved amongst the vegetation. One came forward - a man, holding a spear, moving slowly. As he emerged into their clearing he let his spear fall horizontally, holding it out in two hands, as if offering it to the strangers.

Coll had done the same, on the beach, where he and Rodney had lived for a couple of weeks in a cave and eaten fish and kind-of-rabbits and one great big snorting animal which had tried to run Rodney down in the woodland that edged the beach. Rodney had shot it and John had thought for a moment that he was dead because the thing's momentum had kept it going and it had collapsed on top of him. They'd worked together, then. They'd worked together to survive and restored their friendship and become closer than ever. What had gone wrong? Where was their friendship now? John fought to bring his jumbled memories back to the present.

The man was younger than Coll - taller, wiry, with narrowed grey eyes. He wore the same style of tunic, roughly shaped leggings, and a cape, pinned at one shoulder. He crouched and laid his spear on the ground, but his eyes were in constant motion, flicking around the campfire, wary and alert for any threat.

He spoke and the unfamiliar syllables slowly formed themselves into words. "I am Tanna of the Men of the White Rock."

The shape and emphasis of the language was still there for John, despite the fuzzy slowness of his mind. He'd had to learn the locals' speech - he and Rodney both - because when the Gate had been destroyed its Babel-fish effect had gone with it.

Tanna regarded them with suspicion. "It is our task to watch the sea, but we saw a bright star fall to Earth last night. And we found no fallen star where the land ends but saw your marks and followed them. Who are you and where have you come from?"

John cleared his throat. "I… uh… that was us - the falling star. We crashed. In the sea." The words tumbled in his head and struggled to make it out over his clumsy lips. "I'm… we, er… we were here before. On the Hill. We know Chieftain Coll. And Lady Breesha."

Rodney stood up abruptly and held out his hand. "I'm Dr Rodney McKay." Tanna took a step backward. "This tongue-tied idiot is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. And included in the lucky castaways this time are Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex."

Tanna looked at Rodney's hand and then back at John. He made no move, but bit his lower lip as his eyes travelled over Ronon and Teyla.

Rodney let his hand fall and his flash of bravado died away. "We come in peace?" he said, lamely.

"I have heard that there were visitors. From… another place," Tanna said. "But we of the watch at the White Rock answer to Sumark, not to the Hill, nor the Island stronghold."

The White Rock… John rubbed his forehead. The view from the Hill on a clear day allowed the inhabitants to see most of the island - all but the southern bay where he and Rodney had lived for a while - Breck Bay, named for the little, mottled silvery fish that were easy to catch from the rocks. The bulk of the Northern plain, where they were now, had also been hidden from the Hill. John pictured the section of the north west coast that you could see, before it curved behind the bulky, intervening hills. There had been a white spot on the coast. You could see it from the Island fort too, and Breesha had told him that it was the site of another beacon, marked by a great boulder of quartz.

"You watch for raiders," said John. "Coming from the north?"

"Of course," said Tanna. "And we light the beacon so that the people of the Hill and the Island may see. But we answer not to them but to Sumark and to our Lady - Gronya, the Lady of Slate."

"Colonel?" Teyla asked. "Do you and Rodney know this man? Will he help us?"

"I don't know him," said John. He continued in the local speech. "Look, we really need some help. My friends are hurt. We've got no food and we can't get home. Will you help us?"

Tanna hesitated, glancing over his shoulder.

"Or if not," said John, "will you send a message to the Hill?"

"That will not be necessary," said Tanna. "We of the White Rock are wary of strangers, but we would not deny those in need! We will take you to Sumark."

"Thank you," said John.

Ronon was given a spear to lean on, after his wound had been layered with local herbs, and redressed. Teyla's wrist was also rebound and they were all given clean water and food, but were expected to eat and drink as they walked.

"The distance is not far for a bird," said Tanna, while they were preparing to depart. "But the way is difficult and will take much time, and we would not have any delay in bringing you before our Lady Gronya, for her judgement."

"Great," said Rodney, his footsteps stomping heavily over the rough ground. "Judgement. Sounds like fun. And it couldn't just be a short, easy stroll, could it?" He tore at a strip of dried meat and took a bite of the fruit he held in his other hand. "Mm. I remember these. Juicy." He wiped his mouth.

John shoved his own piece of jerky in his pants pocket. He'd drunk thirstily, but he couldn't eat. They walked in single file through the trees and John had positioned himself last of his team, so that he could keep an eye on them. Ronon was managing with his improvised crutch and Teyla was keeping up. She was still pale, though, and her shoulders had a weary slant which worried John. Maybe it was nothing - Teyla was one of the toughest people he knew, but cold and injury could weaken the hardiest soldier.

Rodney was directly in front of John, but John didn't really need to see his irritable teammate to know that he was okay, because Rodney kept up a constant flow of exclamations over the food, complaints about the terrain and speculations about their destination.

"The Lady of Slate? Not a particularly prepossessing epithet, is it? Why slate? And what's this Sumark place? Why didn't we hear of that before, from Coll? Do you think they're enemies? Rivals?"

"I don't care," said Ronon. "As long as they've got good food and a fire."

"Oh well, they'll have those things," said Rodney. "The question is whether we end up as the food being cooked on the fire!"

"Rodney! These people are not cannibals!" Teyla's reprimand held its usual repressive sharpness.

His team's conversational level set to normal, John let his attention slide, fixing his eyes on the back of Rodney's tac vest, matching his own pace to the rhythm of Rodney's steadily plodding boots.

John, of course, was the team leader, but this time he followed, and really, most often it was Rodney that led the way. Not through difficult terrain, no, or indeed even through relatively pleasant terrain. But in terms of ideas, of possibilities, of leaps of intuition that led to places John hadn't even thought of - Rodney was the guiding light of the whole expedition, the bright star that shone brighter and burnt harder and faster than any other star in the universe - certainly in John's universe.

Jennifer Keller was a lucky woman. Or she had been. And would be still, because John wasn't giving up hope that they'd make it home. Someone would think to look for them here, eventually. Out of all the planets in the galaxy, someone would think to check all the ones they'd been to before, even if it took years. Probably Zelenka. And Lorne would push hard for the search to carry on, until he was ordered, unequivocally, to stop.

Teyla had spoken no word of blame over John's spur-of-the-moment decision to bring them here, even though the thought of Torren must be tearing her heart out - her little boy, who was so bright and quick, already showing promise with his miniature bantos sticks and able to recite simply the stories of his people, revelling in acting out the heroes' parts and pretending to be a terrifying Wraith.

When John had married Nancy, he'd thought that they would have kids one day. A little boy or a girl - maybe both. And he would have loved them and played with them and held them close and never put them through any of the crap his Dad had laid on him. Maybe he would have even given up flying, to be with them.

But Nancy had divorced him. And probably just as well. Because sometimes you couldn't escape your past. Sometimes you were destined to just play out the same old round of mistakes and inflict the same wrongs on your own children as your parents had inflicted on you. And John would have hated himself if he'd turned into his father. Of course, as things were, he'd made mistakes and fucked up again and again, but John didn't hate himself.

The land rose and fell and rose again and, where the earth was exposed, it was sandy. Maybe there'd been dunes at one time and the land had ended here, before all the silt and stones had built up at the northern tip. Geology wasn't really John's thing, but if one of Rodney's science minions had been handy he would have welcomed the explanation as a distraction from the pain in his labouring ribs, the ache in his sides and arm and the black flecks that were creeping in on the edge of his vision.

Concussion then, after all. Not just too much salty seawater.

John was puffing hard when they crested a rise. There was a general pause at the top and he was, for a moment, grateful. Before him was a long, easy descent and the land was then flat until the not-so-distant hills.

Then John studied the terrain more closely and his heart sank.

"Er… excuse me, but what the hell's that?" Rodney pointed an accusing finger at their route.

Tanna shielded his eyes with one hand and looked out across the expanse of low, willowy trees through which dots of reflected sunlight glimmered.

"That is the Myroscoh," said Tanna. "In autumn or winter we would have to go around it or use boats. But at the moment it is passable, with care and a knowledge of the habits and ways of its paths."

"Habits and ways? What - do they move about? Are we in a Dead Marshes situation here? Lights to lead us to our doom, foetid pools of zombie corpses - that kind of thing?"

Tanna shot Rodney a dubious glance. "Sometimes there are marshlights, but who would cross the Myroscoh at night? And as for the… zombies? You have such things on your world?"

"No," said Rodney. "Or only if you're very unlucky."

A small curl of hurt clenched tight in John's chest. At one time - not long ago - Rodney would have included John in his jokes. The cultural allusions and one-upmanship would have bounced back and forth between them. Ronon would have smirked and Teyla would have rolled her eyes and Tanna would have been even more mystified than he was now.

And John… John would have felt that close connection which was composed of nothing tangible or openly stated, which he had no clear understanding of, but which meant everything to him.

At what point had that closeness faltered? When and why had it trickled away into nothing, into a dry distance of curt acknowledgement at best, and sharp-edged, cutting cruelty at worst?

John didn't know. He was weary - so weary with hurt of body and soul. But there was no rest to be had yet. No rest, no comfort, no contentment of understanding and acceptance. Not from Rodney. Not any more.

Tanna led the way down into the tangle of the Myroscoh. And John followed.

So, they've met some of the locals. They seem friendly - probably. But there's some nasty marshiness to get through. This is based on the curraghs, an area of soggy, willowy scrubbiness on the Northern plain of the Isle of Man. It was once a lake, but is now mostly drained. And there's a wildlife park there, from which so many wallabies have escaped that there's now a wild population thriving and people go wallaby-watching.