Compass
By Vega

"Pirates of the Caribbean" and all related concepts and characters are copyright Disney and Gore Verbinski. "Stargate" and all related concepts and characters are copyright MGM Studios.

This is a work of fiction, intended for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.

"You brought a compass to an alien planet?" Rodney McKay sneered over his shoulder, and Carson Beckett quickly snapped the antique lacquer case closed before the nosey astrophysicist could get a chance to peer at the quavering needle.

"Twas a gift from my Da," Carson defended, holding the compass against his tac vest protectively. "Thought maybe it could help."

Rodney lifted pale blue eyes to the matching sky and made his I am surrounded by gnomes face. "First Ford, now you. Do you people not realize that there's no telling whether a planet's electromagnetic north will be anything even remotely like Earth's? If it has one at all. What good is a compass?"

"Never mind," Carson sniffed, and tucked the compass back into his pants pocket. "I thought it might help, is all."

"Help how?" Rodney demanded, crossing his arms over his chest in a petulant display of prove me wrong, go on, try. "We are miles from the 'gate and we have no idea where it is and oh, yes, our radios were stolen by Genii spies. So if you'd like to keep playing with your little compass, then you go right ahead, but I'm going to aim for the direction the sun is setting in."

"There's no saying that's west, Rodney," Carson pointed out.

"No, but the sun was in my eyes when we came through the 'gate this morning. Lo," he gestured grandly, "if we head in the direction the sun is setting, we will probably find the 'gate."

"Or Major Sheppard will find us in the 'jumper," Carson finished, nodded. "Righteo, then. Lay on McDuff."

Rodney cut him an annoyed glare, but turned on his heel and kept walking.

Three hours, Carson confirmed by his watch. Three hours in this rapidly darkening forest with the ... he slapped his palm against his neck ... voracious little alien mosquitoes. Three hours since they had been jumped outside of the market place, separated from the rest of the trading team, and nearly abducted by the Genii.

The Genii wanted Rodney's big brain, of course, even if it was attached to his even bigger mouth. They wanted Carson's brain, too. Luckily said big mouth had a very loud decibel range, and the local equivalent of the sheriffs had come charging into the alley where the Genii had been trying to drug both the Lantean doctors into docility.

Changing tactics, the Genii had ripped Rodney and Carson's radios from their ears, Rodney's watch from his wrist, the life-signs detector in Rodney's hands, Carson's field medical kit, and a few other doo-dads that looked technological.

Scarpering with what booty they could get, the Genii led the local constabulary on a merry chase through the market place, around the town, and deep into the woods. Indignant and annoyed, Rodney had followed, screaming obscenities about biological impossibilities, and Carson had followed Rodney.

And so here they both were, out in the middle of God Knows Where, lost because they were not paying attention to the landscape earlier, without anyway to communicate with their team and without the life-signs detector that could have lead them back to the town.

Carson patted the pocket with the compass in it, thought better of bringing it out again, and instead reached into the breast pocket of his tac vest for a Snicker's bar. It was one of the last on Atlantis. Carson had hoarded as many as he could, trading in his coffee chits to geeks and goons alike for the precious chocolate bars when he discovered boxes were hidden under beds.

But not for himself.

Carson Beckett loved chocolate as much as the next human being, but the Snickers bars were for Rodney. Chocolate to give low blood sugar an instant kick, and peanuts and caramel to create a sustained burn.

Rodney crankily shoved foliage out of the way, and Carson sped up to walk beside him. Without a word, Carson opened the wrapper and handed the candy bar to his friend.

Rodney glanced down at the hand brushing his chest. His eyes widened gleefully at the sight of the chocolate. Then his lips parted in a little breathy "oh" of understanding.

"Been that long?" Rodney asked, taking the chocolate. No further word about hypoglycaemia passed either man's lips. "Not that I can tell. I can't believe those sons of a bitches stole my watch. Now I'll be late for every meeting. Well, not later than Kavanaugh. No one could be later than Mr. Ponytail. But... That was my alarm clock. You know."

"I know," Carson said ruefully. "I couldna get th' damned beeper tae shut off last time ye were in th' infirmary. Woke everyone but you."

Rodney precariously pulled the chocolate bar in half, leaving long strings of caramel to clot on the back of his hands. He handed the slightly squashed part still in the wrapper back to Carson. "I'm not that hungry," he said, and Carson knew he was lying. They hadn't eaten in nearly five hours. And they had gone through all the powerbars they had brought with them at lunch because the soup'd had citrus in it and Carson had decided not to partake on Rodney's behalf.

"Gowan," Rodney said, making an annoyed shooing motion at Carson's face when Carson didn't take the candy, and the Scot sighed.

No arguing with Rodney when he started to give orders. He took the Snickers.

Warmed slightly by Rodney's generosity, Carson pulled a few gooey peanuts out of the mess in the wrapper with his fingers and munched them happily. Rodney was intent on licking the chocolate from his palm.

After a few moments of silent chewing, and less silent walking, Rodney asked, "So why a compass?"

Beckett scrunched up the sticky wrapper and stuck it in his other pocket. He nibbled the last of the caramel off his fingertip and said, "Hm?"

"You said your Dad gave you a compass. Why a compass?"

Carson rolled his eyes. "So now you want to know about it."

"Fine," Rodney snapped, "Forget I asked."

There was anger in his tone, but Carson could see the panic in his eyes. Rodney was feeling just as lost and just as vulnerable as Carson right now, and he wanted the sound of human voices to fill the empty, darkening quiet of the night forest. Talking about the compass was only a way to fill the growing dark.

Carson sighed and pulled the antique out of his pocket. He turned it over in the dying light for Rodney to see. "Twas a gift. This compass has been handed down from faither ta son in th' Beckett family since th' middle of the seventeeth century."

"Really?" Rodney asked. He stretched out fingers to snatch it away, to pry and poke and investigate, but Carson pulled it back faster. Rodney tended to pull things apart. A brief look of hurt crossed Rodney's face, but it melted into haughty distain. "What's so special about it, then?"

Carson let a small smile curl the side of his mouth. "Nothing much," he said. "Tis just old. Antique, ye ken. Good luck." Carson lifted it slightly, let the mandarin glow of the shafts of sunlight cutting vertically through the foliage dance over the compass' domed top. "It once belonged to Sir Cutler Beckett. He was the head of the Caribbean Quarter of the East India Trading Company."

"Really?" Rodney asked again, and this time he actually sounded interested. "Where did this illustrious sheep-violating ancestor of yours get it?"

Carson groaned. "He wasna even Scottish," he corrected. "Sir Cutler Beckett was from London."

"Huh," Rodney said. No joke was forthcoming, but Carson knew that was just because Rodney had decided to store it up for another day. "So where did Cutler get it?"

"Legend says, he stole it from a pirate."

Rodney barked out a laugh. "A pirate?"

"Aye," Carson said, and let the wicked gleam of a storyteller play in his eye. "Captain Jack Sparrow. Ya ever hear of 'im?"

Rodney waved his hand. "No, but I'm sure you're about to enlighten me."

"They say," Carson said, enjoying this slide into distraction, watching the ground carefully so as not to trip himself up, "that Captain Jack Sparrow was Immortal. He stole the cursed treasure of Cortez and roamed th' world as a skeleton. They say he tricked Davey Jones himself into raising the fastest ship in th' world from the depths to do his bidding. Captain Sparrow called it the Black Pearl and trimmed 'er with black sails."

Rodney snorted at the melodrama of it all, but Carson knew he had Rodney hooked.

"They say," he went on, "That Captain Jack Sparrow sailed to edge of the world and fought a kraken until they both died, man and beastie. They say he was so well respected that even his enemies followed him intae th' land of death to fetch 'im back."

Rodney stopped and pointed a sharp finger at the compass in Carson's hand. "And that's supposed to be his. What does it do? Point to treasure?"

"No, lad, one better," Carson said, tipping back the lid of the compass slowly. "It's supposed to point to what th' user wants most in th' world."

Together, both men paused in a breathless glade and peered at the wildly spinning needle. It rocked back and forth, oscillating wildly, before it slowed and came to a stop pointing to a place behind them, between their bunched together shoulders.

The stared at it as one, the tingle of something important pricking their shorthairs to attention.

They looked behind them, the way the needled pointed.

And waited.

And waited.

Rodney broke away first, with a huff. "Some magic compass," he said. "The Stargate is that way."

Carson shrugged and snapped the lid of the compass closed, shrugging off the glamour of the storyteller as neatly as he'd fold away a labcoat. "Tis only a story, aye?"

The loud whine of an engine interrupted Rodney's no doubt carefully prepared replying snark. Both men looked up to see a puddlejumper hovering just above them, tucked neatly between the tops of trees. The back hatch opened and Lt. Ford stuck his head out.

"Hi Docs!" he called with a wave.

Rodney crooked his mouth and gave a half-hearted wiggle of his fingers.

"Goin' my way, boys?" Sheppard's lazy drawl wafted out of the interior and Carson grinned.

"Good ta hear you, Major," he said. "We're in a wee bit of a spot. Think ye could take us home?"

"Sure," Lt. Ford said. "If that's where you were heading."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rodney asked indignantly as the puddlejumper landed gently beside them in the glade.

As soon as the wuffing thump of the ship touching down had vanished, Sheppard stuck his own tufty-head out of the hatch. "That way," he pointed in the direction they had been walking for the last three hours, "leads no where. More forest."

Carson frowned. "Then which way is th' 'gate?"

Sheppard pointed behind them.

As one, Rodney and Carson's eyes fell onto the compass.

"What's that?" Ford asked, pointing at it.

"Nothing," Carson lied, and shoved it into the place where the Snickers bar used to live in his vest.

The younger man shrugged and both Doctors got them selves settled quickly on the benches in the back of the 'jumper. By silent consent, the compass was not brought up in the debriefing, nor in any mission reports.

Carson carried it with him everywhere from that day forward, and Rodney laughed at him and called it sheep-loving voodoo.

"Clearly, the compass had been attracted to the electromagnetic field produced by the 'jumper," Rodney said when he caught Carson playing with the compass in his office three days later.

"Clearly," Carson agreed, and put it back in labcoat his pocket.

End.