A/N: I'm ashamed to say this has been sitting around finished for a while. I thought it was not finished. Then I went back to finish it and was like, oh, I did finish it. Surprise!

While I'm sharing secrets, I actually have a couple of other letters done in this series, they're just not in the right order. So you might not see those for a while either, depending on how well I do with writing the in-betweeny chapters. I DO have a title and prompt for all except, like, three letters later in the alphabet. So there is hope.

P.S. Have I mentioned this is crack? Because it is.

Chapter Summary: Ever wonder what animals would say if they could talk? Or, the one in which Major Lorne is unimpressed with his new superpower. Set sometime between seasons two and three.


D is for Doolittle

"Unscheduled off world activation!"

Elizabeth shut her laptop and walked out of her office to join Chuck at his computer, waiting for an IDC. There were three teams out right now and none due back until tomorrow.

"Major Lorne's IDC," Chuck announced as the code came through, his hand already hovering over the button to lower the shield. Elizabeth gave him a nod and the shield flickered out.

The worry that had started in the pit of her stomach when the gate activated was quelled as Sergeants Jones and St. Clair walked out of the puddle with expressions reminiscent of kids on Christmas morning. Lieutenant Kennel and Major Lorne followed, the latter not bothering to hide his irritation at all about whatever the other three were so happy about.

Jones turned back toward the gate, as if he was waiting for someone else to come through, but it shut down once the four of them were clear. "Damn," he said, still smiling like the Cheshire cat. "Gate must have scared them off."

"Good." Major Lorne looked visibly relieved.

Elizabeth was making her way down the stairs as she watched the exchange. "Uh, scared what off?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. There was definitely a story here.

Lorne straightened up to acknowledge her presence. "Ma'am," he nodded, but didn't explain Jones' comment. "We ran into a bit of a... snag at the Ancient facility. Nothing serious, just needed to cut the mission short."

St. Clair and Jones stifled laughter. Kennel, who was always the epitome of professional (though even he had a glimmer of laughter in his eyes), added, "We encountered an Ancient device that the major unintentionally activated."

Now Elizabeth was really curious. Obviously whatever it was hadn't done any damage, so it had to be something pretty damn funny based on the rest of the teams' response. "Anything we need to be concerned about?"

Everyone's eyes turned to Lorne, who looked more than a little miserable. "It seems the facility we were exploring was some kind of research lab. We'll probably need to send someone who reads Ancient to find out exactly what they were doing there, but we suspect they were developing some kind of universal language technology."

"Universal language? That sounds useful," Elizabeth said, reading in the major's expression that there was more to the story.

"You would think so, ma'am," Jones responded, still grinning like this was the best day ever.

"I think it might be a good idea for Major Lorne to get checked out," Kennel interjected as he nodded toward his team leader, who was now pinching the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.

"Of course," she said quickly. "We can discuss the need for a follow up mission later."

Lorne nodded and began heading in the direction of the infirmary, his team falling in behind him. St. Clair paused for a moment, turning back. "Ma'am, if you do send another team, maybe make sure none of them have the Ancient gene, unless you want more than one Doctor Doolittle running around Atlantis." He grinned at her and then hurried to catch up with the rest of the team.

Okay, this was definitely a story she wanted to hear.


"Well, the good news is you still have a brain," Doctor Beckett said.

Evan scooted out from under the scanner to sit, hand going back to his pounding head. "Yep, I can verify that, Doc. What's the bad news?"

Beckett sighed, studying the picture on the screen in front of him. "I'm not certain, to be completely honest. There's some enhanced activity in the Wernicke's area and some surrounding areas of your brain here." He pointed to some colorful blobs that meant nothing to Evan. "These all deal with language comprehension, which makes sense given the symptoms you said you're experiencing."

"Is it dangerous?" Annoying, yes, but what he really wanted to know is if this was going to make his brain explode, because right now it sure felt like it.

Beckett pursed his lips. "At these levels, probably not. Enough to give you a wee migraine, but nothing more. But I'd like to keep an eye on you, make sure nothing else develops."

There was nothing "wee" about his migraine, but at least he wasn't in imminent danger of having an aneurysm or something. "Any chance of reversing it?"

"We'll have to take a look at the device for that, I'm afraid," Beckett said with a sympathetic smile. "In the meantime, I'll give you something to help with the headache."

"Thanks, Doc." Maybe if he could get his head to quit aching and avoid going anywhere near the zoology labs, he could actually feel back to normal.

After getting his meds and promising to return in a few hours for another scan, Evan headed to his office to write up his AAR. If he wanted to get a science team out there to take a look at the device, they would need his report first, and it would be easier to write it up once than have to inevitably explain the whole story fifty times. Plus, sitting in his quiet office sounded like heaven compared to the afternoon he'd just had.

Of course, word traveled faster than he could write, because not ten minutes later, Sheppard appeared in the doorway with a smirk on his face that said he had already heard the tale. Evan stopped typing and sighed, giving Sheppard his attention and waiting for the inevitable onslaught of questions and jokes.

"You're back early," Sheppard started when Evan didn't say anything.

"Yep," Evan agreed shortly.

Sheppard walked in and slumped in one of the chairs in front of the desk, folding his hands across his stomach and grinning. "Heard you had an interesting day."

Evan answered him with a glare.

"Jones was right, you are grumpy." The look of glee on Sheppard's face lessened ever so slightly.

Sighing, Evan scrubbed a hand over his face. The headache still hadn't fully gone away, though it was a little better than before. "Sorry, sir. It's been a long day. Not sure if you heard, but I can talk to animals now."

"I did hear," Sheppard said. "I'm guessing based on the mood that it isn't as fun as it sounds?"

"Not unless you like having murderous squirrels scream death threats at you all day."

Sheppard snorted a laugh that he tried to cover with a cough, but didn't quite succeed. "Jones said they were cute."

"Yeah, when you can't hear them describe how they're going to pluck out your eyes and rip you open so they can nibble on your intestines," he said mirthlessly, which made Sheppard's composure slip even more.

Now that his headache was lessening and he was no longer hearing the tiny voices chattering about all the ways they were going to dismember him while they pelted him with nuts from the treetops, Evan could see how his situation would be funny to someone else. But hearing words coming out of animals' mouths had been unsettling enough, and then when the fluffy little rodents started with the gory threats, it had gotten downright creepy.

And they hadn't been the only animals talking to him. It was like the entire forest somehow knew that he could understand them, because suddenly they'd been overrun with wild animals vying for his attention. Birds, frogs, little rabbit-like creatures… Those hadn't been as bad as the squirrels—they had merely barraged him with a million questions. All at the same time. Talking over top of one another so he couldn't make out a word they were saying, just a cacophony of noise that made his head feel like it was going to explode.

And then there was the part where the rest of his team had really thought he'd lost it, because not only could he understand the animals, he could talk back to them. In a moment of frustration, just after an acorn had bounced off his nose, he'd told the mob to shut up and leave him alone. Except, apparently, it had come out as chittering animal noises. That was about the time his team had turned on him and laughed their asses off instead of helping him fend off his entourage of critters.

Sheppard, like his team, didn't seem to have much sympathy for him. "McKay's looking in the Ancient database to see if he could find anything about a device that lets you understand animals. So far he's come up empty-handed, but I'm sure if we go back and take a look at it, he'll figure something out."

A return to Planet Murder Squirrels was not at the top of Evan's bucket list, but if it meant they could reverse the effects of the device, he was all for it. "Yes, sir."

Pushing himself up out of the chair, Sheppard's eyes glinted evilly. "In the meantime, you're probably going to want to hide. I heard Jones say he was heading over to talk to Doctor Marks."

Evan took a deep breath and let it out slowly so he wouldn't curse out loud. Damn Jones and his crush on the marine biologist. Of course he would use this as an excuse to talk to her. Evan would probably start receiving requests from the biology department at any moment, begging him to come talk to their animals.

"Thanks for the heads-up, sir," he grumbled.

"Cheer up, Lorne," Sheppard said as he walked to the door. "We've all accidentally set off an Ancient device with weird side effects at some point. At least yours is cool."

Evan rolled his eyes at that. Yep. Real cool.


Rodney couldn't remember a time he'd ever seen Major Lorne as anything other than annoyingly cheerful, but right now, he was far from it. It was almost enough to make Rodney feel bad for the guy. Almost. If he wasn't the source of Rodney's irritation right now, he would definitely consider feeling some sympathy for him.

Said major was perched on the low stone wall of the ruins, shoulders slumped, acting utterly defeated and thus being minimally helpful in answering Rodney's many questions. But that wasn't the irritating part. The irritating part was the hundred or so animals surrounding him, chattering away like he was some kind of Disney princess. All the noise was making Rodney's work a lot harder than it needed to be.

They'd been here for nearly three hours now and had yet to figure out the magical combination of buttons to reverse the effects of the device. Rodney wasn't even sure how Lorne had managed to activate it in the first place. He'd been worried that he would end up speaking squirrel too, and so had initially sent a reluctant Zelenka out to try and figure out how the thing worked, but after ten hours or so, the Czech had come back to Atlantis muttering obscenities and claiming if he had to spend one more minute on that planet that he would really quit this time.

Now Rodney could see why. Whatever Lorne had done, they couldn't figure out how to duplicate it, let alone reverse it. And since the device was part of a larger stone obelisk, they were stuck trying to figure it out here. In this humid forest. To the soundtrack of fuzzy little bunnies and squirrels and buzzing mosquitos who were straight up pissed that they were here.

"For the love of God," Rodney snapped after an errant acorn thwacked him in the shoulder. Oh yeah, the damn squirrels had been chucking things at them, too. "Can you please make them shut the hell up?"

Lorne narrowed his eyes in disdain. "I was just going to ask you the same thing."

"Hey," Sheppard interrupted, poking his head into the ruins from wherever he'd been off "scouting" with Teyla and Ronon. Rodney was pretty sure they were just making excuses not to sit here in animaltopia. Lucky them. "How's it going in here?"

"Oh, just fantastic," Rodney bit out as he turned back to his translation of the instructions for the device that he had pulled up on his tablet. Not that it was helpful at all—whoever had written them had made them so ambiguous they were impossible to follow. "It's so easy to work with Snow White sitting over here calling all the animals to him."

He saw Sheppard give him a look out of the corner of his eye but ignored it.

"I think the squirrels view the device as some kind of god," Lorne told Sheppard. "There's talk of taking down McKay if he keeps messing with it."

Rodney whipped around, his eyes wide with sudden fright. "They're going to what?" Noting the small smirk on Lorne's face he scowled. "Oh, haha. Very funny."

Lorne grimaced and rubbed at his temple. "I'm only half kidding. They're getting pretty creative with their threats. One just suggested that they should rip off your head and post it outside as a warning to others not to come in here."

"Rodney, any way we can hurry this up?" Sheppard asked, obviously not amused by Lorne's joke.

"If you have an idea of how to work this thing, be my guest," Rodney answered shortly. "Otherwise, it's just going to take some time."

Sheppard held up a hand in apology. "Fine. Let me know if I can help."

"You know what would be most helpful? Getting these damn animals out of here so I can think."

"I could shoot them," Sheppard offered.

"Please don't, sir," Lorne said with a wince. "I don't want to find out what would happen if you provoked them."

Sheppard shrugged at Rodney in a way that said he'd tried his best.

Sighing, Rodney tuned out the noise and focused on the device. The metal face had multiple dials and switches on it, labeled poorly, of course. He thought he might have the combination correct this time, but there was only one way to find out.

"You. Come here," he ordered, crooking a finger at Lorne.

The major slithered heavily off the wall and shuffled toward him. His furry fan club perked up, watching closely, but thankfully kept their distance.

"I don't suppose you remember if this is where these switches were when you ignored all the carefully written standard operating procedures for handling Ancient technology and went ahead and touched this," Rodney commented.

Lorne shot him a glare. "We've been through this. I didn't know it was a device until it zapped me. I thought there might be a ZPM in here."

Rodney waved a hand at him, not feeling the need to explain again why it was utter stupidity to think there might be a ZedPM in this ruined mess of an Ancient facility. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Were the switches flipped up or down?"

"I don't know," Lorne answered shortly, as if that question was absurd. He motioned at them emphatically. "There's, like, twenty of them!"

Rodney opened his mouth to tell Lorne he should have been paying more attention if he wanted this fixed, because, believe it or not, Rodney was not a magician, but Sheppard cut him off.

"Rodney!" Sheppard barked. "Just fix it already."

"Oh, I'm sorry for trying to do this right so I don't accidentally fry Lorne's brain."

That caught Lorne's attention; he apparently hadn't considered that that was a possibility.

Sheppard didn't seem to think it was something to worry about. "Less drama, more fixing," he ordered.

"Fine," Rodney grumbled, checking over the configuration of the switches and knobs one more time and cross referencing it with the instructions. "I think I figured out how to reverse the effects of the device."

Lorne didn't look convinced.

"Oh, come on," Rodney complained. "It's perfectly safe. I was kidding about the brain frying thing. If I'm wrong, the worst it'll do is make you speak Spanish instead of squirrel." He swept a hand impatiently at the pedestal.

Lorne took a deep breath, reaching slowly for the device. His animal parade began to hoot and holler more loudly, agitated at this new turn of events. Like they knew what was happening.

"Probably," Rodney added just before Lorne touched it.

The major hesitated for a moment, but after glancing back at the rioting animals, he laid his hand on the stone surface confidently.

And immediately yelped, pulling his hand back as electricity sparked. The charged wave pulsed out from the device and through the air, like shaking a towel full of static electricity. Rodney and John both ducked at the unexpected sparks.

The critters didn't like it either, and bolted in every direction.

"What the hell was that?" Sheppard demanded angrily, dropping the arm he'd raised to protect his head.

"That's what it did the last time, too," Lorne said, shaking off the shock.

"A little warning would have been nice!" Rodney complained.

"So did it work?" Sheppard asked, ignoring him.

Lorne looked up into the surrounding trees for his animal friends. A squirrel bounded back into view, chirping angrily. Rodney swore the thing raised a tiny fist to shake at him before it bounced away again.

"Normal squirrel noise," Lorne confirmed, his face breaking into a relieved grin.

"Thank God," Rodney said. He was more than ready to get off this planet. "Can we go home now?"

"Yes, please," Lorne agreed.

"Good job, McKay." Sheppard gave him a crooked smile. "I'll round up the rest of the gang."

Rodney collected his gear, shoving it haphazardly into his backpack. The animals may have moved on, but he wasn't convinced they weren't going to come back, and he'd rather not find out if Lorne's joke about them wanting to tear him apart was true or not.

"Ssso sssweet. Sssso juiccccy."

He was so caught up in packing that the words caught him off guard. Why would Lorne say something like that? He must have misheard. "What was that?" he said, glancing at the major.

Lorne was standing near the doorway to the ruins and turned to frown at him. "I didn't say anything."

"No, I heard you, you just said…" he trailed off as he heard the voice again.

"Sssuch a feasssst. Ssso tasssty sssweet!"

Rodney froze, his heart stopping in his chest. That definitely hadn't been Lorne, he was looking right at him. Which meant…

His eyes slowly tracked around the ruins, searching for the source of the voice.

"McKay?" Lorne asked, confused.

He caught movement in the corner of his eye, a mosquito-like bug landing on the back of his hand.

"Ah, ssso juicccy," the voice said.

Yelping, he smacked the bug off his hand, desperately waving around his head to swat away any more insects that tried to talk to him. "No, no, no," he moaned. "This can't be happening."

"McKay," Lorne said. "What's wrong?"

"You can't hear that?"

"Hear—" Lorne's question was interrupted as Sheppard barreled back into the ruins.

"Rodney! What the hell did you do?!"


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