Rodney sighs, wiggles his toes in the mud and relaxes back in a heap. The sun's warm, and he's tired, and there's apparently no pressing emergency, no one screaming for help any more, and really he just wants to lie still and let the aching tension slide out of his spine.

"Rodney!"

He groans, opening eyes that he hadn't realized were closed and stares up and up and up at John's face. He wonders why John's so far away, because five minutes earlier they were side by side. He had been explaining why the planet was so dry, walking along beside the colonel, a few feet ahead of Teyla and Ronon. And then...

Whatever. He's really tired; his back muscles are throbbing; his head aches and thinking only makes it worse. He closes his eyes again. If John wants to talk he can come down here.

"Damn it, McKay! Look at me!"

Why the hell is he so upset? Is it too much to ask for five minutes of uninterrupted rest? Rodney opens his mouth to say so, but all that comes out is a weakened gasp. It occurs to him that breathing is suddenly a lot harder than it really should be; that the ache in his back has spread, wrapping tendrils around his chest, his stomach, spreading down one thigh much faster than the other. Something's not right.

He has to make a conscious effort to get his vision focused on John, noting fresh lines of sweat through the dust on his face, the clenched muscles in his jaw. He looks simultaneously sickened and determined, and Rodney's only ever seen than look when someone's been kidnapped or trapped. He wonders who the poor bastard is, how they'll get the unfortunate soul out of whatever's happened now.

"I need you to stay awake, Rodney! You hear me?" John's voice has an edge of desperation, and he's shouting at the top of his lungs. There's no way Rodney would be able to avoid hearing him. "Just keep your eyes open and stay with me!"

It's strange that he hasn't demanded help yet and enlisted Rodney into the rescue attempt. Rodney wants to point out he's available to assist right now, even if he is exhausted and even if every part of his body, up to and including his toenails, is currently throbbing in time with his pulse. He worms his toes deeper into the mud and stops. It hurts, badly, but that's not the problem...

He was explaining why it got so dry on this planet. Explaining the stifling heat away with easy geography and slightly more complicated physics. There were endless dirt and sand paths and walking along them would result in a thick coating of dust on any exposed area of skin within seconds. There was no mud.

Trying to sit up sends spikes of agony down his back, dropping him back to the ground with a strangled groan. He tips his head to the side instead and peers blearily towards his feet. The dust and sand is mixed up into a thick, grim, black paste all around his body. He recalls he was wearing shoes at some point earlier in the day, and wriggles his feet again. They're not there now.

He looks back up towards where John was before and sees nothing but a massive cliff reaching for the sky – now, how the fuck did he miss that earlier? John's not there anymore, but Rodney can hear stressed voices arguing sharply above him anyway. Teyla's voice carries best, and Rodney swiftly learns that she does not want to leave, but if they do not hide they will not be able to help anybody. The deep rumble that is Ronon speaking spits out a curse word, and his team goes quiet for a few seconds.

"John?" Rodney tries to call, consonants sticking and catching in his throat, hissing out when he manages to suck in enough air."John?" He can't speak loud enough to catch their attention. He sighs, and then groans when the movement shoots agony across his ribs, causing his breathing to hitch. The pain doesn't subside and he's left gasping, with a vague feeling that only one of his lungs is properly inflating anymore.

There's a clatter of stones near his head and someone snaps, "Careful!" John reappears over the cliff edge, complete with charming smile. Rodney's not in enough pain to be fooled by it for even a second. He would have frowned back, but the headache was being particularly vicious in the region of his forehead.

"How you holding up, Rodney?"

Rodney merely blinks at him. The man's face is sliding in and out of focus, and if Rodney didn't have other pressing concerns, such as breathing, he'd be very, very worried about that.

"Look, Rodney, we've got to go for a few minutes. We won't be long. But we need you to stay still down there, ok? Don't move and don't call out. As soon as we can come back, I'll find a way down there and help you out. You understand?"

Nodding hurts, but he manages a vague sort of up-down twitch that John must take as an affirmative.

"Ok, then. It'll just be for a few minutes, and we'll come back, I promise." John disappears once more, and Rodney stares blankly at the place his friend was for a long, long time.

John hates everyone right now. He really does.

He hates Elizabeth for giving him this mission, himself for accepting, the natives for being terrified of anything that came through the 'gate, and whatever member of the local fauna than had trod out the path they took through the forest. He hates Ronon and Teyla for leading them with a ferocious pace, so fast they left the natives far behind and allowed them to relax as they walked along. And as for Rodney, well, John just really wishes he would have focused on what he was standing on instead of conducting a geography lesson.

He scrambles through a bush, hearing thorns rattle across his tac-vest and ignoring the scrapes that open up across his face and arms. He's far enough into the forest not to be noticed, but close enough to the path to be able to spring out and seriously injure anyone who tries to hurt his scientist. He can hear the villagers getting closer; they've been alerted by the rock fall and John's calls to his injured teammate. Nearby, Ronon has plastered himself against a tree trunk, gun held tight and ready if needed – Teyla is somewhere in the other direction and when John stares long enough into the undergrowth he thinks he can see her, kneeling behind a tree stump.

He can see the villagers now, milling around, peering both down the cliff and into the forest. John clutches his P90, and levels it at their heads. He might be able to get three of them in one shot if he's lucky, but then he'll have completely blown his position and this forest was not grown to be easily negotiable.

And if Rodney's to have any chance of surviving, then his team has got to survive too.

It would have been almost easy to escape the angry villagers and circle their way back to the gate if they had kept up a suitable level of watchfulness. But they had known they were safe as long as they kept up a fair pace, and then they had fallen back into their old banter, and that's when it went really wrong.

Rodney had been striding beside John, ranting about continentality and air masses and prevailing winds, as they had made their way along the top of a tall slope. The path was strewn with pieces of slate-like rocks, and the entirety of the slope beside them was made of the same thing. A few minor rockslides had already occurred due to stones bouncing off people's feet, leaving a nearly vertical cliff face behind.

The physicist had incautiously strayed too close to the edge as he talked, focusing more on the gestures he was making than his feet. It took one thin piece of the not-slate in the wrong place to trip him up, and tip him down the slope. All three of his teammates had immediately leapt for him, but it was too late.

His fall down the slope was marked by a dust cloud that obscured everything from sight, the scraping and shattering noise of tens of tons of slate succumbing to gravity, and one terrified shout of pain which was cut off abruptly and left John's heart in his throat.

When the dust cloud cleared, the slope was completely gone; leaving a sheer cliff nearly twenty foot tall behind. The loose rock was gathered in huge piles against the tree line, the force of the landslide having carved a neat slot into the forest and bending the plants that it was balanced against. Rodney lay at the very foot of the cliff, still as the dead. Around him blood was rapidly soaking into the dust, turning it to mud.

"We need to get down there," snarled Ronon, eyes sparking wildly, and John could not have agreed more.

But then Teyla spoke, "How? There are no handholds on the cliff, and none of us have any rope."

"Give me a few minutes and I'll find a way." Ronon was already stalking further down the path.

"Wait there!" John snapped. This was not how things were meant to go. He was in charge; he'd make the decisions, good and bad. He stared at Rodney, all the way down at the bottom of the cliff, and then started when the man moved his feet.

"Rodney!" John threw himself to his knees at the edge of the cliff. Ronon's hand clamped down hard on one of his shoulders, and John gave the Satedan a long, reassuring look before glancing back down to Rodney. He'd closed his eyes again. "Damn it, McKay! Look at me!"

The physicist opened bleary eyes again and gasped in pain. Ronon rumbled something about head injuries and confusion and John had to grit his teeth and will back the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. There was so much blood – too much blood – and a concussion was not going to do Rodney any favors in this state.

"I need you to stay awake, Rodney! You hear me? Just keep your eyes open and stay with me!" He sat back on his heels to let himself calm down, and glanced back the way they had come. Teyla was standing there, P90 raised and ready, and John's stomach twisted painfully in worry.

"I can hear other voices, John." She sounded as cool and controlled as ever, but John could see the tension across her shoulders. "The villagers are much too close."

"Then we need to get down there now!" growled Ronon, stepping away from John now he was certain the colonel wouldn't take a dive off the cliff in desperation.

"There isn't enough time," said Teyla. "I do not want to leave Rodney any more than either of you do, but if we do not hide ourselves then we will not be able to help him at all!" She snapped out the final few words, betraying her calm exterior and hefted her gun a little higher.

Ronon snarled and kicked at a stone, sending it whirring off the cliff. John barked "Careful!" and the Satedan lowered his head sharply as an apology.

Now John was left with the choice – to find a way down now and help their teammate while undoubtedly exposing themselves for a fight with the natives, or hiding and waiting until the coast was clear. He could hear the villagers' voices himself now and made his choice.

"How're you holding up, Rodney?" I don't want to leave you, he thought, I really don't. He plastered a fake grin on his face, in the hope that Rodney was confused enough to think it real. "Look, Rodney, we've got to go for a few minutes. We won't be long. But we need you to stay still down there, ok? Don't move and don't call out. As soon as we can come back, I'll find a way down there and help you out. You understand?"

Rodney twitched his head painfully and John realized that was the closest the man could get to a nod. "Ok, then. It'll just be for a few minutes, and we'll come back, I promise."

He stood up and turned to Ronon. "As soon as you think you can slip past them to the 'gate without them noticing, go for it."

Ronon nodded. "Sure."

John gestured towards the forest. Ronon scrunched his way in without another word and Teyla smiled weakly at John before slipping through the branches. John stood at the edge of the cliff for as long as he could before running for cover and silently praying that his friend would be all right.

Something smacks the ground near Rodney's head and he winces internally. His eyelids have gotten too heavy to keep open anymore and he's tilted his cheek to the ground to try and spare his aching neck. There's a horrible metallic taste in his mouth now that intensifies every time he takes a choked-off breath, and a sticky sensation is sliding down his forehead towards his ear. The sun isn't as nearly as warm as it was before and he's shivering slightly.

Something else impacts with his right arm, and pain shudders up and across to his sternum. He's too tired, too weak, to move away or even flinch, and someone shouts triumphantly. Rodney's reminded of John whenever he gets a hole-in-one in their virtual golf games.

Where is John anyway? He said something about leaving for a while, but it feels like he's been gone for hours. He wouldn't give up like that and just forget about his teammate, Rodney knows he wouldn't, but he'll be fucked if he's not thinking it.

John doesn't leave people behind, and he promised after all. He promised he'd come back. He promised.

It doesn't take long for the villagers to lose interest in what they think must be a corpse, and start to move on. Ronon slips from his position behind his tree and ghosts his way through the undergrowth with surprisingly stealth for such a big guy. John loses sight of him quickly and then starts to crawl closer to the path so he'll be able to check Rodney's ok sooner.

When the last of the stragglers move along, John catapults himself out of the forest and to the edge of the cliff again. Teyla bounds out close behind him and sets about making sure the natives are all gone.

Rodney's much paler now; his lips would be turning grey if they weren't coated in blood. John has to watch carefully to see his chest rise and fall and it worries him how jerky the motion is. The dust around him is nearly all mud now, stained red-black with gore.

John really needs to get down there right now.

He catches Teyla's eye and looks back they way they'd come.

"I will stay here and watch over him," she says quietly, and the colonel takes off running. There has to be a stable way down somewhere along the path.

Teyla stands at the cliff-edge much as John had done, quietly repeating all the prayers she knows, from the old Athosian ones her father had taught her, to the new ones she had learnt from her new allies and friends. It's nothing more than a way of comforting herself; it reminds her of gathering with her people and thanking whatever god might listen that there were still some of them left.

It's been twenty minutes since Ronon sprinted off, and she's been standing here, murmuring to herself, for nearly fifteen minutes. John's called in on the radio once or twice to make sure she's ok, and to tell her he's found a way down, but since then it's been quiet.

She reaches the end of a long Christian prayer she persuaded Carson to teach her long ago and starts into the Satedan thanksgiving speech Ronon belts out every time he gets drunk, just as John scrambles his way over a pile of rock and skids to a halt beside Rodney.

He looks up and smiles, chest heaving and face even more sweat-stained than before, and then focuses on the injured man beside him.

Teyla sighs, relieved, and continues thanking the old gods of Sateda for the strength to defeat her enemies.

The blood soaks straight through John's BDUs within seconds of kneeling down, but frankly he can't care less. He checks for a pulse, finds it just as weak and thready as he expected it to be, and listens to Rodney's breathing for a few moments. The scientist's chest is still moving awkwardly, and the blood bubbling up from between his crooked lips suggests that a rib and lung have become a lot more closely acquainted that they were ever meant to be.

The sharp slate-like rock that had given under Rodney's weight seems to be the main culprit for the man's injuries. There are huge cuts, ranging from scratches to weeping gashes, all along his arms, legs, neck and face. Both of his boots have been wrenched off and his feet are a bloody mess, one ankle twisted at a nasty angle to the rest of the leg, which is twisted at an even nastier angle to the rest of his body. There's a head wound too – blood's dripping down from an impressive slice just below his hairline.

"Rodney? Hey! Rodney!" John tries to rouse the man, to no avail. He can't risk shaking him, and shouting any louder would be risky while the natives are still lurking about some place. Instead he gingerly opens his friend's eyelids and attempts to compare the pupils without allowing blood to flow in. They look ok to John, but, then again, there's a reason he's not a doctor and his first-aid knowledge is more of a vague 'stop the bleeding, try to avoid infection and don' t let them fall asleep if they're concussed' sort.

He pulls out his little first-aid pack and tries to judge which wounds are the worst and how to deal with them. He settles on the head wound – they always bleed too much – and a gash that's nearly the length of Rodney's right thigh. He wipes away all the blood he can, and binds both injuries the best he can without jarring the man too much. There's always the possibility of serious internal injuries that aren't easily apparent, but John reckons that if something had gone dreadfully wrong inside of Rodney, the man would be long dead by now. It's been close to an hour since he fell.

Something hits the ground nearby with a light thump. It's Teyla's med-kit and John gathers it up like it's made of gold. It enables him to sponge enough gore from Rodney's feet to see the damage underneath and decide to bandage them up, along with his right forearm.

John's been kneeling in various awkward positions for too long for his muscles not to complain now, so he stands and stretches, looking towards the sky for a puddlejumper. Ronon's bound to come back any minute now, he thinks, and then he can hand Rodney over to Carson and his medical staff, without actually ever revoking his responsibility.

He slumps back down to the mud and picks up Rodney's left hand carefully. It's scraped and battered, with purpling bruises all across the knuckles, and John needs comfort desperately so he holds it in a tight a grip as he dares anyway.

Ronon doesn't sit in the puddlejumper. He stands beside Lorne in the pilot's seat and barks out directions tersely.

He can see Carson fussing around with a well-stocked medical kit as a reflection in the jumper windscreen. The man occasionally looks up and gives one of the three other medical staff he'd brought along a sharp order. Ronon had only been able to describe Rodney's injuries vaguely, and Carson's being forced to work from there.

Lorne brings the jumper down low as Ronon points out the path he'd followed back to the 'gate. He grips the back of the co-pilot's seat with a heavy hand as they near where he left his team. He hopes that he'd run fast enough, that he'd taken the quickest path. That Rodney had been able to hold on long enough.

He shakes the last thought from his head as Lorne makes a 'hah' noise. The pilot's spotted Teyla standing alone at the edge of the cliff. For a few horrible seconds, Ronon thinks that he had been right in his fears about McKay, about Sheppard, that the former had died and the latter had been driven by grief and fear to jump. But then Teyla sees them and she smiles and waves frantically, and if Rodney had died and John killed himself she'd never smile.

Lorne brings the jumper down onto the path and Ronon almost strangles the idiot. "McKay and Sheppard are down the cliff!" he spits.

"I know," says Lorne in a calm voice that makes the ex-Runner want to go for his gun. "But we need to bring Teyla home too, yes?"

The ramp isn't even half open before the Athosian darts in, skipping over the medical gear to reach the cockpit. "Go down!" she orders sharply. "Now!"

Lorne's a smart man and knows when not to press his luck. He doesn't even bother to close the ramp and lowers the jumper down, squeezing it into the little free space between the huge piles of slate and the cliff face itself. As soon as it touches down, Carson and his staff are off like shots, and Ronon sits down heavily on one of the passenger seats. Teyla sits across from him. Out of the three of them left in the jumper, Lorne's the only one who watches what goes on outside.

John stays seated beside Rodney as the jumper comes down. He's moved his free hand to Rodney's throat now, feeling the pulse twitch feebly under his fingers. It's fading gradually away, but it's still strong enough to have soaked four of the five dressings put on not that long ago.

Carson's the first one to reach the pair of them, swearing under his breath even before he bends to grab John's hand and check Rodney's pulse himself. He meets John's eyes for only a second, before ushering the nurse with the backboard round to his side.

"You stayin' there?" he asks, grabbing an oxygen mask and gingerly getting the strap around Rodney's neck to hold it down.

"Yes," croaks John in a barely audible voice. He clears his throat and repeats, "Yeah."

Carson nods understandingly even as he helps get the backboard in position. "You've got to help us get him on this then."

It's a delicate operation to get Rodney onto the board and strapped in place, but Carson and his team are experts at things like this by now, even if the other doctor on his team is actually meant to specialize in skin disorders. John just grips Rodney's hand like both their lives depend on it and holds him steady until all the ties are secure. Then he grabs the side of the stretcher and helps them lift it onto the jumper.

He spots Lorne turning the pilot's chair back to face the front of the jumper and hears the ramp wheeze closed behind them. Teyla squeezes past the medical staff and takes him by the arm, leads him to the co-pilot's chair and pushes him into it. Without looking away from the landscape speeding along below them, Lorne hands his CO a water container. John sips some down detachedly, eyes fixed on the back of the puddlejumper.

The only parts of Rodney that are warm when he wakes up are his leg and his hand. The rest of him is bordering on freezing; despite the blankets he can feel piled on top of him.

It takes an annoyingly large amount of energy to persuade his eyelids to peel open, and when they do so it feels as though each and every eyelash weighs half a ton. There's no more blue sky up there, just light gray ceiling and achingly bright lights.

He allows his head to fall to the side, smiling faintly at the lack of any bolts of pain up his neck. Ah, so that's why his leg's warm. He can see the lumpy shape of a cast under the blanket, going from around mid-thigh to his ankle. He doesn't look to see what's keeping his hand warm just yet, distracted by a figure approaching from nearby.

"Aye, I thought you'd be wakin' up about nae," purrs a quiet voice. Rodney watches blearily as the figure coalesces into Carson watching one of the many monitors beside the bed. "Looks like you're on the mend good and proper." The doctor turns his attention full to his patient. "Want somethin' to wet your throat? Don't nod – you've banged your neck up too much."

Rodney narrows his eyes and manages, "Ye' ple'", wondering what the hell Carson had expected him to do. But the ice chip Carson slips him soothes his irritation easily, along with his aching throat, so he doesn't bother thinking up anything suitably scathing to say. "How long…?" he asks instead.

"Well, we kept you out while we re-inflated your lung, stitched your wounds quickly and replaced as much blood as we could, which took a couple o' days. Then, once we were certain you could take the operation we fixed up all your breaks, dislocations and properly stitched the worst o' the cuts. So, about a week."

"Oh." He relaxed back into the bed properly. "I'm cold."

"I know; you're still missin' a fair bit o' your blood. We're still getting it all back in though, so you'll be fine soon enough," says Carson, and he sounds so cheerful, Rodney can't help but believe him.

Glancing over to the other side of the bed, Carson smiles, the expression melting away all of his worry lines in one easy move. "Have you seen him?" He nods towards whatever made him grin.

Rodney says nothing, tilting his head back straight and closing his eyes. Carson sighs fondly and ambles off to his office.

Once Rodney's sure he's gone, he looks over to his left. John's head is resting on the bed, his hair corona'd in the florescent lights of the infirmary, his back bent awkwardly in a position that he'll regret when he wakes up. Rodney smiles, stronger this time, and squeezes the hand clasped around his own as hard as he can. John only makes a muffled groaning noise and flails his free hand slightly, snuffling into the sheets like a small child. It's absolutely adorable and faintly ridiculous and Rodney snickers quietly and closes his eyes again.

After all, he's gradually warming up, he's still half-drugged, there's no pressing emergency, no need to call for help, and he just wants to lie still and wait until John wakes so he can tease him about that stupid noise he just made.