Drops in the Ocean

"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." --Ryunosuke Satoro

"Where is he?" the vulture asked, walking a circle around them.

Rodney's hands were tied behind his back. He knelt on the stone floor right next to an unconscious Teyla. His knees would never be the same again. "How should I know?"
He received a nice, healthy slap to the face. The sound reverberated off the granite in the mausoleum like place. Once boring, the place now tasted of fear.

"Hey! I was here, not there!" Rodney gave the sniveling little villager, standing near an altar of stone, the glare of a lifetime. "Your little buddy and his partner in crime split us up very nicely."

His answer was met with another smack, this time to the back of the head. He was really getting tired of this.

A crumble of movement caught his attention as Teyla began her struggle to sit up. "What…what happened?" she asked as the disorientation evaporated.

Rodney snorted, "Oh, the same thing that happens every time: we were betrayed."

Teyla looked around at the cowering villager in the corner and at the black cloaked people standing guard around them. "What do you want?"

The leader who had been doing all of the talking so far looked down at her. Even though a grotesque mask covered his face, Rodney could hear the sneer in the man's voice when he answered, "I believe we were just discussing that."

They were interrupted by another group of leather garbed people dragging an unconscious Ronon.

"Brother, here's the other teammate. The last one escaped as I already communicated." They dropped Ronon next to Rodney, dreads brushing his pants leg. "We have spread out and are searching the catacombs. We will find him."

"He's the leader. He won't leave his team behind. It is not their way."

Rodney hoped that Sheppard could find his way out of the catacombs. Directionality was not his specialty. And with the ability to find anything without Ronon or Teyla being a non-event, Rodney had to concede to himself, once again, that they were immensely screwed.

McKay was right: John had the directional sense of a stoned monkey. He'd never admit it out loud, but right now felt it good retribution toward himself for not sharpening that particular skill. To be fair, though, neither was it really his fault. He was in a mountain – had to be – not unlike Moria in Lord of the Rings, all carved and polished and dark. Probably the leftovers of some grand civilization who thought themselves all clever, carving up a mountain to hide from the Wraith. Maybe the Wraith found them anyway, maybe they killed themselves, but he highly doubted that the current squatters had the imagination, man-power or patience to build a place like this.

John skirted around ornate pillars and slipped like oil into shadows. The down side was that this place was a maze. The upside was that it was too big and too dark to be easily spotted. But if the distant echoes of angry people shouting were anything to go by, the bad guys knew he'd gotten out and were currently looking for him. And to top it all off, his vision was cut in half, one eye hidden behind the abused and swollen skin of his eyelid. So much as a twitch sent ripples of pain from his eye-socket and radiating up into his skull and down into his neck, making his head liable to explode.

It can explode when I'm out of here. And like the magic words, John thought he felt a draft. He looked up and almost choked on his relief, surprise, and a little manic humor. Cut into the wall just above his head – easy to miss in the darkness – was a square hole: an air shaft if the fresh air was anything to go by. He thanked whatever deity that was listening that the bad guys hadn't had a chance to work the lower body, sparing his arm.

It was a short hop to grab the edge and a quick scrabble into the hole. Slim as he was, it was still a tight fit, scraping his arms, ribs and hips as he wiggled his way straight into perpetual darkness. He would never tease Radek about shimmying through air vents like a hamster again.

Time didn't have much of an existence in dark places, but John was pretty certain it was coming up on eternity since he'd squeezed his way in. He was starting to feel claustrophobic – he'd never felt claustrophobic. Cramped spaces were a fact of life for a pilot.

But this... this was more than cramped. It was tight getting tighter, the walls closing in without crushing. All his wriggling was churning up dust, turning the air thick and stale and old, like it was filling his lungs with cotton. Each breath became a little deeper, a little faster than the last. He could feel his heart beating against the stone beneath him hard enough to make it vibrate around him.

Then he saw it – the literal light at the end of the tunnel. Suddenly, the space stopped closing in and he could breathe. He wriggled faster toward white-light tinted gray and then poked his head out into open sky for pure, clean air that he breathed as deep as his surroundings would let him. There was a narrow ledge just beneath the vent-- precarious-- but John was fairly certain there was enough room to slide his body onto it. He maneuvered onto his side and, slowly, inched his way out, contorting his body in uncomfortable ways that had his spine and tailbone digging into the vent's wall.

The snap and crack of stone made him pause. Before his brain had a chance to process what he was hearing, the stone gave way. John fell, and fell, and fell, breath locked in his chest, wind plucking at his clothes. Then he stopped, hard, bone-jarring with a snap and a flash-flood of agony ripping through his arm and shoving the air from his chest on a scream.

"What happened with you guys?" Rodney snapped at Ronon when he was fully awake, which was always a nice way to return to consciousness. It usually took him less time to recover, but he had already been on the receiving end of a beating, as evidenced by a large gash on his forehead, trickling blood into one of his eyes, and a spectacular shiner he could feel forming on his other eye.

"Wraith worshippers, how 'bout you?"

"WRAITH…!" Rodney paused and then lowered his voice. "Wraith worshippers? Are you sure?"

"Yeah, McKay. Very sure. I stalled them and made sure Sheppard could get away. They stunned me when they saw the door in the tunnel shut."

"Shh," Teyla ordered and nodded towards the people walking toward them.

The three team members put on their best defiant faces in the cold, stone place. Three of the worshippers approached and stood in front of them. The speaker's voice was muffled by the black mask that sort of looked like a Wraith's face.

"Atlanteans, you are always so pompous. You always think you know what is best for our galaxy. You always seem to think you can give hope where there is none." The black leather creaked as the leader circled them like he had earlier. He pointed to the villagers in the corner. "Your coalition will do them no good. They already belong to a larger brotherhood."

"Larger brotherhood?" Ronon let the disgust in his voice shine. "Looks like Wraith wannabes."

The leader motioned for the others to raise Ronon from the ground. Ronon shook them off and stood on his own. They immediately grabbed him by the arms to hold him in his place.

"Wannabes? I guess you're right," the vulture agreed.

The faceless man raised his right hand and smashed it into Ronon's chest. The shock of the action, the momentary delay of his brain making sense of the move, and then the actual surprising pain caught Ronon off guard.

"What the hell is that?" yelled Rodney, struggling to get to his feet.

Teyla also tried to stand-up and help.

Sights and sounds were spiraling away. Ronon's muscles seized up and did not cooperate with his brain. He was pretty sure there was lots of screaming coming from his mouth.

The leader pulled his hand away leaving a bloody circle on Ronon's chest. "We may not be our gods and masters, but we know how to emulate them. We know how to carry out their wills." The mask hid his face, but his voice revealed his elation in the imitation of his masters.

Ronon knelt gasping and gagging on bile that was trying to escape his stomach. The device had delivered an electric current that had not felt much like a feeding, but still hurt way too much. He stayed there, trying to recover from the sudden attack.

The leader held out one of their radios. "Dr. Rodney McKay, you will call Col. Sheppard on this communication device or I will do this to each of you in turn until you can not scream anymore."

"You know who we are?"

"Of course, we were looking for you. Your foolishly generous nature is well known amongst my masters."

Ronon let a dark laugh escape from his lips. "You'll have to do better than that."

"Maybe, for you, this is a joke. But I can tell by the fear on Dr. McKay's face that he does not feel the same way."

Rodney put on his stubborn face. "I won't do it."

And then it was his turn. Ronon watched his teammate writhe under the touch and he felt pride flood through him. Rodney had come a long way. Still, Ronon couldn't wait for Sheppard to escape and bring the Marines. Then these imposters would see the real meaning of pain and he would help with the lesson.

Sheppard was in pain – a lot of pain: the kind of pain that narrowed you down to the individual functions of your body, dissecting them mentally one at a time in order to remember how they functioned. Breathing first, manipulating his own lungs to stop the obnoxious, suffocating spasm that had him gulping in air without a lick of oxygen to show for it. Only when he remembered how to breathe did the pain abate from a blade slicing through bone to sledge-hammers wrapped in thin cotton; going back to blades when he next focused on moving his limbs. The slightest twitch of his right arm made pain dance and shoved air from his lungs on a very unmanly, whimpering cry.

Having a high threshold for pain could only go so far. Cuts and bruises John could ignore, broken bones were a whole other animal, and John knew a broken bone when he had it – up in the bicep, just under the shoulder. It was the kind of break that was going to take its sweet time to heal. At the extreme moment, it was going to make moving ten kinds of hell.

But move he had to, because his team was waiting for him. His team, who he had to leave behind to save them.

John bit his lip until it bled as he maneuvered his right hand into the hem of his pants with his left, crying out in the end anyway after it was done.

He wasn't leaving them behind. People are left behind when you don't go back for them, and he was coming back for them.

He bit his lip even harder and still cried out shoving himself upright with one hand. Stumbling to his feet, he almost fell. His head swam, darkness glittering at the edges like an empty threat, but the darkness cleared pretty fast when the bad guys emerged from around the bend, armed and pissed. Adrenaline was dumped into John's veins, dulling the pain to regular hammers in cotton and widening his awareness to the world around him: the much wider and more stable ledge he was standing on, the hollow roar of a fast-moving river on his right, bad guys in robes running toward him, raising their stunners and – after a glance over his shoulder – a dead-end in the form of a sheer drop-off.

There was only one exit when the bad guys started firing. John didn't think – which he would let Rodney ream him about later – and took a running leap off the cliff. Time became eternal, and he hovered in open air. In between the nanoseconds, he actually thought he would sprout wings and fly.

Then he hit a wall – a malleable wall of ice and force shoving him under. Pain tore him to pieces, and once again he forgot how to breathe.

Teyla sat very still and listened in between breathes. John was still on the run, but he had not made the Gate yet. Most importantly, he had not been caught either. She could hear snippets of conversation from the leather clad group. Rodney and Ronon lay passed out on the floor, each enduring two more turns with the hand device. She looked down at the ring of red bleeding through the thin, satiny material of her shirt. She had taken her turn as well.

Rodney had been terrified, had screamed until he was hoarse, and had told them nothing except how to hotwire a car. Then he started naming the elements on something called a periodic chart. The radio would not work through the layers of stone. The Brothers would not believe them. She had tried to explain the problem as had Rodney.

"Col. Sheppard might have lost it!" she had exclaimed as they went another round with Ronon. Nothing seemed to penetrate their granite-like heads.

The two villagers that had served as traitors were dead. They were no longer needed and she guessed they were not so much part of the Brotherhood as they were led to believe. Consequently, their village would be burned according to the lead Brother.

Now she realized the villagers had known this was going to happen and, in their own way, had tried to help. They had given the team a map of the tunnels underneath the mountain top temple. The archon of the village had held one last meeting with her team in private before they left on the side trip.

"You will not have enough time to see both, Col. Sheppard. May I suggest Pret take Miss Emmagan and Dr. McKay to the temple. And Bairl take Mr. Dex and you to the catacombs." Archon Duer stood up from behind the large table where they had been meeting for almost a full day. He walked to one of many cluttered and brimming bookshelves that could have housed blueprints to any number of buildings in the town and many a tome about the Goni people. He chose one leathery roll and walked to their side of the table. "These may help if you become separated from your guides. Take them."

John had taken them and handed them over to Ronon. He gave a lopsided smile and said, "Thank you."

"I hope you will gain a better understanding of our people in that most historic and sacred place." The archon nodded to his assistant and two young men entered the room. From there, the team started the journey up the mountainside to learn about the predecessors to the Goni.

Unfortunately for John, Ronon still had the map safely stored in his pack. John hadn't even had a chance to look at it. She listened to the whispers a little closer as they drifted her way.

"They've located him…but he's…eluded them again…most likely dead."

She would not believe that until they brought his body to them.

Apparently, the lead Brother agreed. "I need proof. They are like roaches, hard to kill." He walked back over to the alcove, where her team sat surrounded by stone and guards. "Teyla Emmagan, it's time to ask for different information."

Two of the guards lifted her from the floor. "I want a list of all of the coalition members." He flexed the hand with the metal apparatus. "I want it now."

He placed the hand over her right breast and let the current surge through her.

"Mr. Dex, I know you are awake. Tell me what I need to know."

Teyla could not hear the answer, but she had a feeling it was not the one the leader wanted because he twisted the mechanism, slicing further into her skin. Her scream intensified. Her heart beat at strange intervals. Her muscles tightened and twisted like strong, knotted rope.

She thought of Torren and his future and knew that no answer would come from her lips. She prayed that Ronon and Rodney could endure. She prayed that John could as well.

Atlantis would call soon. They would be overdue soon. They just had to hang on. She had to believe these things with conviction or fail. That was not an option.

John held onto the rock with a tenacity, for which he really shouldn't have had the strength. He dug his fingers in until he was sure they were bleeding. The water pushing against him was a contradiction, holding him place while trying to pull him away. He used it, inching around the stone that felt like nothing under his numb fingertips. It aimed at his equally senseless body and he let the river sweep him away to the next rock – which was always a mistake. Each time his body slammed into another unrelenting surface, this time back first, and John could feel another rib snap like a dried twig. The muted stab that should have been full blown agony was the only plus to a near hypothermic body. Maybe completely hypothermic, John couldn't really tell. He was shivering pretty hard and was sure Carson – or maybe it was Keller – had said something about knowing to put your head between your legs and kissing your butt goodbye if you stopped shivering. Although maybe those had been Rodney's words during their last survival training... thing.

Damn, it was hard to think. And move.

And yet move and somehow think John did, from rock to rock, letting the river carry him to shore and kick his ass at the same time. He didn't even know how close he was, if he was even heading in the right direction. He just kept moving, kept getting pummeled, riding a wild faith in the something or someone or whatever had been keeping them alive in this galaxy for five years because, really, they should have been dead a long time ago.

Or maybe he really was just that damn stubborn. He'd left his team behind. iLeft/i them. Necessity, yes, but... he'd left them behind. He couldn't die, not yet, not until he made up for it. Not until they were safe. Then he'd let the river or whatever pummel him until the cows came home.

So John moved, hitting rock after rock, choking on water in between. The cold drilled down into the bone, coating every organ in ice, turning his heart to crystal. He was sure it should have exploded by now; it should shatter like that dead frog his tenth grade biology teacher had dipped in nitrogen and then smashed into the floor, littering it with solidified frog guts. Julie Franks had puked all over the floor...

John's hand touched hard soil. The gasp of amazement shoved from his frozen lungs sounded more like a whimper. He crawled, a three-legged dog looking for a place to curl up and...not die, just rest. Except he didn't have time to rest. He hurt everywhere, soaked beyond the skin and lost in a coniferous forest heading toward winter at a run.

He was so damn cold, shaking fit to fly apart and his teeth clacking loud enough to echo. It hurt, far more than it had on the cliff, climbing to his feet; like having joints made of broken glass grinding into each other and tearing his muscles to shreds. He was sure that if he hadn't been numb, he'd be screaming instead of coughing up the periodic grunt and moan. Still, by the time he finally managed to stumble, stagger and waver to his feet, he was breathing fast and hard in a way that his ribs were going to pay him back for later. He staggered toward the nearest tree, slumping against it just long enough for him to catch his breath.

John didn't even realize until he was halfway to the ground that he'd started sliding down. He jolted, hard, like he did when Woosley was having another one of his long-winded staff meetings made too long by useless technical terms. John respected Woosley, he did, but the man was worse than McKay once he started going.

He pushed off from the tree, steady as a drunk, deeper into the forest. He was sure they'd crossed a river on their way to the mountain. Yeah, definitely sure. When he got back, he was making it an official policy to only pretend to like the nice locals, but otherwise distrust them with everything you had.

Crap he was tired.

Where the hell was he?

He just wanted to sleep... no, he could sleep when his team was safe. He needed to do nothing but move until his team was safe.

One of the lesser Brothers whispered in the ear of his leader. "We're moving them. Our masters want them taken to a closer and safer world."

The lead Brother stopped his pacing and looked down at his captives. Ronon liked the fact that they were moving toward where they needed to go. The leader walked a few feet away and continued the conversation, not completely out of earshot.

"That is dangerous. What happened? They were supposed to send a cruiser." The mask may have hidden his initial reaction, but his voice and body language could not hide his confusion and dismay.

"I do not know, brother. But it is not ours to question--"

"You do not need to remind me, brother," he said rather testily, cutting off the lesser Brother.

This made Ronon smile a little more. They so wanted to intimidate like their masters and it just wasn't working. Not even on McKay. They seemed to think all they had to do was threaten them with the device on their leader's hand or use it and the three would be cowed.

Ronon had had much worse. Rodney was not the same man dangling from a rope on a fried world. Teyla had a new reason for her strength. Sheppard would find his way to the Gate. They worked together as a team even when separated.

Ronon knew they had to buy time from these pathetic men. They could not leave the planet. Atlantis would never find them then.

"Set fire to the village. Kill all of them. No one can survive to feed information to Atlantis." One of the black, leather-clad Brothers nodded and ran out of the Temple.

Six other Brothers surrounded the team as the leader commanded, "Get up."

Rodney and Teyla wobbled; their balance slow in coming with hands tied behind their backs. Ronon followed suit as well. Yes, the name of the game was going to be buying time. The Brothers led them out of the temple into the windy, cool air of the mountain top. The path winded its way down to the village below and to the inhabitants that were as good as dead.

They began the descent with the gravel crunching under their boots and the mud sticking to the sides of their soles. Far below he saw the fast moving river. The pilgrimage road went right across it on a narrow bridge.

That would be a good spot to start a fight, he thought.

Ronon slid beside Rodney and Teyla and whispered, "I have a plan." He kept on walking, not turning back to see if they had heard him.

John slid one foot in front of the other like the good little soldier he was. He was sure he shouldn't be able to do this, that he should have ended up in a face-plant some time ago (minutes, hours, days?) But since when had he listened to...well, anyone. Except Rodney, because he knew what he was talking about ninety-eight percent of the time. And Teyla, because she always knew what she was talking about. And Ronon, because he never took "no" for an answer unless ordered to. Even then...

John stumbled into a tree, shoulder first, recalling the pain and his brain back to the now. He pushed off from it scraping his palm on rough bark, feeling nothing except a sharp pinch in the tips of his fingers. He actually started to contemplate slipping his hand under his shirt and placing it against his broken ribs – cold hands good as any ice-pack. But it was unnecessary; all he could feel was an uncomfortable throb every time he breathed. And that was bad, useful, but very bad.

What was even worse was that he had no idea where he was. He could still hear the river somewhere to his right, which meant he was going...

He had no friggin' idea. But he was ipretty/i certain he remembered hearing the river on his left when they were following those villagers. Ergo, the river on his right meant he had to be heading in the right direction – no pun intended.

Somewhere in the distance, a twig snapped. John froze, stiffening like a spooked rabbit, and listened.

There it was again: crack, snap, closer than before. Then there were voices. Crap, how stupid were these people? John staggered behind a thick trunk skirted by a copse of bushes still clinging to their leaves. He kept his hand on the trunk as he eased himself into a crouch, grunting and grimacing. Numb as he was, it still hurt. He peered through a gap in the shrubs.

The bad-guys kicked through the forest, noisy as lumbering elephants, and warm and dry in their damn leather: four men in all, which John couldn't help thinking was a bit much for little old him. He also couldn't help a tremulous smile courtesy of his ego. The men kept the search pretty tight: no more than ten feet from each other, giving John plenty of room and time to creep slowly back to the next copes. He'd spotted a small dell between him and the river that would provide perfect cover so long as he remained bent. Increasing hypothermia was bad, but that didn't stop him from appreciating it at the moment.

John half-slid, half-skipped down the short incline. It wasn't steep, probably four to five feet, but his foot just had to land on a loose stick that last foot, had to slip out form under him, had to land him on his damaged side and had to make him cry out. Shouts skittered through the woods on the heels of thumping footfalls. John ignored as much of the pain as he could and pushed off from the ground into a crouched run. Adrenaline joined with the numb, and he felt nothing at all.

Having his hands tied behind his back restricted movement and, to top it all off, they were going numb. Rodney was sure that Ronon had lost a few marbled dreads when he asserted that he had a plan. Rodney could only think that they would give the bad guys a shin-kicking of a lifetime.

The tree bows draped over the road blocking the waning sun out. The air cooled and, strangely enough, he found himself sweating, which made him even colder. Because the road was occluded by shadows stretching across their way, Rodney tripped more than once. And Ronon had a plan.

Well, they were a team and he could roll with the punches. He could follow his large teammate's lead. He could do whatever asked as long as it didn't involve hands. He could run. He could hide. He could scream at their captors until he turned blue in the face.

He was worried about Sheppard. There had been no recent news whispered between the scary groups of men. He just had to keep one foot in front of the other. He was so tired. His chest hurt. His head ached. He had to remember just one foot at a time.

The path twisted down the mountain and the sound of the river grew closer. The rushing water sounded so different than the water lapping against the piers of Atlantis. That sound had a soothing cadence. Any other time the roar of the river would have been ignored by him, but, right now, it sounded ominous: like a beast bellowing its presence. And Rodney knew he was walking toward it with no way to escape.

He stumbled again. Teyla stepped up close, giving support without touching. "Rodney, not much farther," she whispered.

"Do you know something I don't?" he asked, hopefully not very loudly.

"No, just be ready."

Be ready? Be ready? It must be Ronon's plan. Ronon's plans always were simplistic in nature-- shoot, punch, kick, and knife his way to his goal. Rodney liked a more subtle and elegant solution-- or whatever works. As it stood right now, subtle was not going to work.

The sound of the river started blocking out most ambient sounds. The worshippers were keeping their conversations to a minimum and their eyes roving the underbrush. The river came into view as they rounded one last curve in the road. A foot bridge with no railings crossed at a narrowed part.

Ronon was the first to cross the bridge behind one of their guards. As soon as the entire group was on the fifteen foot bridge, Ronon gave the Brother in front of him the shin-kicking of a lifetime. And then Rodney lost track of what was happening as Teyla started her own shin-stomping. The next thing Rodney knew he was in the water and spinning down the current toward large painful looking boulders.

"Great plan, Ronon!" he yelled as he smacked painfully into one. He hoped to hell he didn't drown and that the pain in his shoulder wasn't a break but a terrible bruise. His head went under and panic set in, and Rodney wanted to go home, get in his bathtub, soak, and just relax…and not die.

John had never considered himself an adrenaline junky even with the majority of his personality begging to differ, but at the extreme moment he was really digging the rush. There was no pain, no cold, only distant aches, stiffness and the occasional stumble. Other than that, he was flying high and staying ahead. He also made sure to zigzag-- because it was always a good idea to zigzag when Wraith wannabes were shooting at you with stunners. His path brought him to and from the river, making him seriously contemplate taking another plunge. Between wannabe Wraith and becoming an impromptu member of the Polar Bear Club, it was depressing how much of a non-contest it was. John feinted left and then darted right toward the steep shore.

Two feet from that shore and he was shoved forward by an impact in his back. The slap of arctic cold heightened his senses, turning throbs into screaming pain, until his lungs shouted the loudest. He tried to claw his way back to the surface, but hands were holding him down. So he clawed at them, kicking and shoving in forced slow motion. His head broke through into open air; he gasped and went back under. He kicked, his attacker kicked back, having the upper hand of a healthy body. A foot shoved into John's stomach shoving the air he managed to suck in right back out. Instinct took over, turning self-defense into desperation, grabbing at anything to haul himself back up. Bad-guy wasn't prepared for it, and as John used him to hoist himself up, bad-guy went under.

Then it was bad-guy who was desperate, shoving John under as he used him for buoyancy. John didn't even have to think about it the next time he surfaced – he slammed his elbow into bad-guy's face, shoved him away, and grappled for purchase. But the river wouldn't have it, and swept them both away.

"Nice try, Dr. McKay."

Rodney sputtered water out of his mouth and gasped air into his oxygen starved lungs. He came to a shallow exit point and floundered, trying to gain his footing. He was incredulous that big Brother, standing high and dry on the shoreline, thought that he would ever throw himself into a fast moving river to escape…. Actually, that idea didn't sound as farfetched as it would have just a couple of years ago. Man, he'd been hanging around his team for too long.

But really it was laughable because Teyla had hit one of the Brother's brothers and-- Bing, Bang, Boom-- Rodney was crawling out of a freezing cold river with his hands still tied behind his back and a sore shoulder. On the bright side, he hadn't drowned. He staggered to the rocky shoreline and dropped to his knees, hacking and coughing-up water-logged lungs.

"Your companions were not as lucky as you." The lead Brother waved his arm back towards the bridge. Rodney looked and discovered Teyla and Ronon collapsed in the dirt of the road on the now crossed bridge.

"We had to stun them. Pity, because it will take us longer, but will give our brethren added time to find Col. Sheppard."

"Lucky us," Rodney whispered to himself in between coughs.

The man reached down and hauled Rodney to his feet, painfully. "Anymore problems, we kill the woman."

Rodney started sputtering again, sans the water.

"We don't really need her because she can be more of a problem than she's worth."

"You have no idea," Rodney muttered as he joined one-half of his unconscious team on the road.

The air cooled even more as the sun continued its disappearing act and Rodney shivered, dripping water onto the ground. He sneezed and heard it echo off the rocks and the trees. He felt truly alone for the first time since this whole thing had started. He looked at the imposing woods and wondered again where Sheppard could be.

"Brothers," the leader called into his radio, "Report on your progress."

When no answer seemed to come for a minute, Rodney thought he just had received his answer.

For a moment – a split second suspended in time – John actually thought he was going to die. Had this been a mission delivering a nuke to a hive ship, or buying time enough for his team to escape, he probably would have been okay with it. He'd always been the "go out doing something right" more than the "go out in a blaze of glory" type.

Except it wasn't okay, because his team was still in danger, it was up to him to get them out, and that made for one hell of an incentive. He struggled – clawing, kicking, pushing – against the river and a pair of hands trying to literally pull him down. Then, just when he thought his lungs would pop, his head broke the surface and his chest inflated against the shrieking protest of his ribs. Still he kicked and clawed, fighting his way through rocks and those hands until he grabbed the jutting roots of a precariously leaning tree and hauled. John flopped like a salmon onto the shore, gasping loudly.

Then he crawled – and, damn it, he would crawl if that's what it took. He knew what he had to do, where he had to go. Using the same tree that he decided for some pointless reason he would have to name later, he climbed his quaking way to his feet where he pushed off into a shambling walk through the woods. He couldn't be that much farther, he knew he couldn't. The trip down the river had cut his travel time.

Unless he over shot. In which case, he was screwed.

So when he stepped into a clearing dominated by a huge alien ring, he stopped at stared, slack-jawed. Then he laughed, small and breathy climbing and climbing into an all-out guffaw that pissed off his chest. And yet he didn't care, because there was salvation – the possible end of his road but the means of freedom for his team. Just a few more steps, a little more expenditure of energy, then he could die a happy man.

Not being above selfishness, he preferred flopping on an infirmary bed a happy man. What ever the case: team safe first, then happy oblivion.

John lurched forward.

A weight slammed into his back and he was falling. He hit the ground chest first and screamed. But it was nothing compared to being flipped on his back and a hand slamming into his sternum, biting, crushing, opening him up and tearing him inside out.

But this time his hands weren't bound. This time, he could fight, so he did. He grabbed the wrist and pushed, and pushed, and pushed until the pain quieted. Running high on terror and resolve, John flipped, putting him on top and the Wraith on the bottom...

John gaped. Not Wraith – human, human in Wraith leathers, sneering up at him in rage. John elbowed him in the chest, slugged him, and then ran – ran using everything he had left – straight for the DHD. He collapsed against it, laughing wildly between heaving breaths, and dialed.

Then he realized that he didn't have the damn GDO. It felt like a kick to the gut. The wormhole burst to life, shimmering merrily, waiting for him to step through to his doom.

John slammed the meaty part of his fist into the DHD. "Son of a bitch!" Then he shut it off and dialed again. Shut it off and dialed again. Shut it off and dialed again, all out of mindless spite. iYeah, take that futility/i. After the fifth time, he slumped boneless to the ground where he curled up into a shivering heap. It wasn't like there was anything else he could do.

Take the stunner, go back for his team: do the blaze of glory thing after all.

Pulling himself back to his feet, John staggered over to the bad guy. He was so intent on putting one foot in front of the other, then lowering himself to his knees in a way that wouldn't end in a face plant, and trying to get enough oxygen that it took a moment of fumbling through an empty holster to realize it was, indeed, empty. Plus the guy's clothes were wet. After three minutes of putting two and two together, John finally figured the stunner must have been lost in the river.

With that realization, he slumped, almost toppling to his side.

He didn't know how long he sat there, just breathing, so at an utter friggin' loss that he couldn't even think. Minutes must be going by. Hours. Days. Months. And he just sat there, fighting to stay upright.

Then the 'gate hummed to life, glyphs lighting up like squares on a quiz-show board. The event horizon punched out and stabilized. One minute later... give or take, but that's what it felt like... a MALP trundled through. It panned right, it panned left, it trundled closer, it stopped, and it stayed right where it was. Some tiny voice in John's mind cleared its throat and suggested timidly that he might want to talk to the thing. It sounded like a good idea, but when his lips moved, no words came out.

Then the cavalry came – marine after marine hopping through the watery vortex with Lorne at the head. They surrounded John and the bad guy, aiming weapons at bad guy and endless strings of questions at John. What happened? Where was his team? What's going on? Are you hurt? Someone placed a blanket around John's shoulders while someone else flashed a light in his eyes. Words like hypothermia and shock were tossed around, followed by more questions. Are you injured? What hurts? Can you walk?

John answered by laughing – breathy, loud and oh so hysterically happy. Then he demanded a 'jumper.

Teyla woke up to Rodney screaming and the leader of the Brothers ranting in half sentences. "…more trouble…where are my…my masters' will…" He pushed the hand device harder into Rodney's chest.

When he stopped, he whirled around and directed his men to, "Kill them."

"B-but…" one of them stammered.

"I'm through with this. Our masters will do what they will."

Rodney dropped to his knees and heaved. Ronon stood glaring. Things seemed to have deteriorated fast since their failed skirmish on the bridge.

"Brother, we can no longer contact any of our other brothers."

"Do it now! It's time to go and receive what is due us. We have failed them."

All of the brothers stood straight and three walked up behind Teyla, Ronon, and Rodney, one for each. Teyla knew she would not let them butcher her so easily. They would have to earn the kill. Ronon had the same look on his face, but Rodney was oblivious as he recovered from the effects of the torture device.

She heard knives unsheathed. She felt the bastard's breath on her neck. His arm grabbed her around the throat. The time to act was upon her.

She saw movement in the shadows. Teyla smiled.

"Not today," she whispered.

As the assassin behind Rodney brandished his knife to slit his throat, a shot rang out. The man fell.

"No!" the leader yelled as everything burst like fireworks around him.

With his hesitation, Teyla stomped on her would be assassin's foot and dropped herself to the ground. More shots rang out and all who were not from Atlantis lay bleeding on the road within minutes. Marines released themselves from the shadows of the darkened forest as lights from a 'jumper shown down like a warm ray of sunlight.

"Are you all right?" one marine asked her as she heard a resounding, "No!" come from Rodney answering Maj. Lorne.

"Better now that you're here," she said while looking around at the body-strewn road.

Ronon stood with his boot on the leader's throat and stared with cool decision at the man. A marine released his hands. Ronon bent down and removed the mask. "Just wanted to have a face to go with the man I kill."

The lead Brother chortled, snapped his teeth together, and then foamed spittle seeped from his mouth. His body convulsed and his eyes rolled around in their sockets.

Teyla went to Rodney as they watched.

"Poison? Coward!" Ronon snarled. "Well, dead's dead in my book."

Lorne stepped up next to the three of them. "We have a landing area just a few yards down the path. Someone wants to see you."

Teyla smiled again.

"Sheppard? Is Sheppard all right?" asked Rodney as he staggered up. He nearly fell down again.

"Yes, Rodney. He wanted to see all of you before he would go back to Atlantis." Lorne started to walk down the path, assisting Rodney, as the Marines finished the clean up on the roadside. "So, let's go to him before he decides to show up here."

They walked a little way before the ''jumper came into view. The back hatch was already down and John sat in the back with plenty of people providing attention. He looked worse than she felt. He looked worse than the three of them combined.

"John! What the hell happened to you?" Rodney shouted as they drew closer, asking the question the whole team had wanted to ask.

John looked at them, relief spreading across his bruised face. He drunkenly put a smirk on it. Then he slumped into the closest medic. The medic, for his part, caught the officer before he face planted on the floor.

Teyla panicked for a moment. They had been through so much. If all of them didn't make it, she didn't know what they would do. Ronon rushed forward, first into the 'jumper.

"He's just passed out," reported the medic. "He's a mess, but, for now, he's stable."

"The villagers, are they safe?" Teyla asked after the initial shock of John keeling over wore off.

"We found a group of our friends out there directing everyone to a meeting house. They were going to torch the entire structure with everyone inside," Lorne said.

"Should've let them," rumbled Ronon.

"Not all of them were with the Brotherhood, Ronon." But Teyla understood that Ronon was speaking from a biased and impassioned point of view. "The archon tried to help us."

"Yeah, I guess."

"I'm sure Mr. Woolsey will have you give a preliminary report after the infirmary gives you a once over," Lorne said as he made his way to the front of the 'jumper. "Let's get them home, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir." The 'jumper lifted up and Teyla finally relaxed against the bulkhead of the 'jumper's rear section. Someone placed a pressure cuff around her arm and that was the last thing she remembered until the rush of the wormhole.

As the 'jumper settled into a berth, she opened her eyes to see her team all safe, sound, battered, and alive. It was a job well done, if not done quite correctly.

John first became aware of a general discomfort throughout his body, with his chest the ring leader. But it wasn't enough to get him to wake up – he knew why he was hurt. He became aware that he was warm and lying on something soft, which made for the exact opposite of the incentive needed to wake up.

Then he heard voices, three distinct voices: one complaining, one calming the complainer, and one telling the complainer to "get over it", whatever "it" was. The voices made for much better incentive. Yet, no matter how hard John tried, he just couldn't get his eyes open.

"Hey, wait a minute, hold up... I think John's waking up." Rodney, that was Rodney.

"John?" Teyla.

"Sheppard." Ronon.

All of them were alive...or they were dead, having ended up where ever John had ended up.

"Wakey, wakey sleeping beauty," said Rodney, light and jovial, and far too normal for someone who might be dead. But then what did John know about the afterlife except that it was where hippie Ancients liked to hang?

"You've slept long enough, Sheppard," said Ronon, just as light. John became aware of a soft, warm hand gripping his own, smaller than his own: Teyla's hand.

"John?" she said, not quite as light. Light marred by worry. Leave it to Teyla to be honest down to her tone of voice. John didn't want her to be worried, so he fought, struggled, mentally clawed until his eyelids finally parted to assault him with a sliver of scorching light. He winced and then tried again.

John's eyelids parted to all three faces of his team hovering over him, smiling and alive, because no way could scrubs be the standard issue wear of the afterlife.

"About damn time," Ronon said, wearing the biggest grin John had ever seen.

"Yeah," said Rodney. "And looks like you're a fellow member of the chest-mutilation club." He tugged down the collar of his scrub, letting the top half of a white-bandage peek through.

John's hand flopped onto his chest, feeling the bandage. Moving his hand, he felt more bandages cinched comfortably around his ribcage. He was warm, dry, and relatively pain free.

Teyla gave him an ice chip. "You had us worried, even though Dr. Keller said you would be fine." She then touched her forehead to his and breathed, "Thank you, John."

"Doin' m'job," John whispered. Teyla didn't need to thank him. He would always save them.

"Kind of cutting it close, though," Rodney mumbled and then yelped when Ronon shoved an elbow into his ribs. The two gave John the rundown of their side of things in the form of arguing, Rodney doing the most talking as he berated stupid escape plans and almost dying of hypothermia. John closed his eyes – not sleeping, just content. He was warm, they were safe, and they were alive. All of them, and, yes, that included himself.