Lost and Found, a stargate: atlantis fanfic

Title: Lost and found

Author:LinziDay

Rating/gere: PG 13 (swearing)/ gen

Spoilers: Season 5 casting

Disclaimer: If I owned them I would be sitting on an island beach right now with a frosty drink and a pair of cabana boys. Instead, I just shoveled a foot of snow from the roof of my car. Draw your own conclusions.

AN: Beta'd by the fabulous (and fast!) Wildcat88 and Stealth Dragon.

Written for Liketheriverrun as part of the 2008 Secret Santa ficathon. Prompt at the end.

John knew it was true: Rodney was generally oblivious.

Oblivious to people. To social situations. To the world around him if he found something more interesting, which was most of the time. When Rodney was preoccupied by power readings off world, he routinely walked into trees and stepped directly into gaping holes. During one especially memorable mission, he wandered off a cliff. After that, the team took turns walking in front of him to clear a path.

But in Atlantis, especially in the gateroom, he was aware of everything. Minuscule pauses in the gate's dialing sequence, a shift in the wormhole from cerulean blue to cobalt blue, an alert klaxon that was two decibels softer than it was supposed to be. He once subjected Chuck to an hour-long diatribe on the dangers of eating and drinking around 10,000-year-old equipment when he spotted a water bottle cap on the floor of the tech's station.

So it was that much more unnerving when Rodney arrived in the gateroom for a mission and completely missed the fact that John was dressed in street clothes, a civilian duffel bag at his feet.

John cocked an eyebrow. "Hey, McKay, you all set?"

"Mmhm," Rodney answered, eyes fixed on the broken life signs detector he'd been obsessing over.

Rodney also failed to notice the wormhole was already open.

"Packed enough for a couple days with the Etharans? " John asked.

"Sure, sure."

And the fact the gateroom was void of everyone but the two of them? Yeah, that got by him, too.

John crossed his arms over his chest and watched Rodney fiddle with the LSD. He was pretty sure he could walk Rodney through the gate, troop him through the SGC and buckle him into the passenger seat of their rental car before he'd even realize something was up. But that wasn't the way John wanted this to go down. Okay, sure, it'd taken a certain level of . . . subterfuge. . . to get Rodney to the gate. But it didn't seem right to just shove him through without so much a mention of the V word.

Plus, it'd be better for everyone involved (all right, mostly John) if Rodney got through being pissed off now and not, say, two weeks from now.

"Rodney."

"Hmm?"

"Rodney."

"Yeah?"

"McKay."

"What?" Rodney's head shot up, blue eyes meeting hazel, and for the first time in days John got a good, close look at him. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot and underlined with shadows, his mouth drawn into a tense frown.

Rodney's right eye twitched and he broke eye contact.

Rodney started to return his attention to the LSD, but he caught sight of John's clothes and his gaze stuttered back, sliding over John's jeans and long-sleeve t-shirt, to the open wormhole, to the empty gateroom. His eyes went wide. "Why are you. . . what is the. . . where are — "

Then Rodney snapped his mouth shut and John knew he knew.

"Rodney — "

"No."

"C'mon, you gotta admit — "

"No."

"Jesus, McKay, it's just a vacation."

"I already told you, Colonel, — you and Jennifer and Woolsey and everyone — I'm fine. Well, I'm not as caught up on my sleep as I'd like, because, you know," he said, gripping the LSD as he swept his arm in a grand gesture likely meant to indicate the entire Pegasus Galaxy was robbing him of REM. "But I haven't cracked. I've been working. Work. Ing. Something I like to do, in case you hadn't noticed, Colonel Hasn't-Been-To-His-Office-In-A-Year. I'm not obsessed or fixated or whatever other psycho babble the new shrink came up with to orchestrate this little one-man intervention. I'm fine, dammit. I'm not going anywhere. I'm fine."

Rodney took a step back as if to bolt for the door.

Which is when John grabbed the front of his jacket and shoved him through the gate.

Rodney spluttered for the first couple of minutes, mostly though the greetings from Sam and Teal'c, and then ranted for the next thirty, right through the cursory physical exam and the walk to their room for the night. He didn't pause until John sat down on one of the two twin beds and started unlacing his boots.

And then it wasn't much of a pause, really.

"What are you doing?" Rodney demanded.

"Getting ready for bed," John answered nonchalantly. "And so are you."

"Bed? It's like 4 p.m."

John tossed the boots under his bed. "On Atlantis it's like 4 p.m. Here it's closer to midnight."

"So?"

"So we're scheduled to catch a plane at 9 a.m. I don't know about you, but I'd rather sleep here than the airport," John said, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back against the pillow. "Think of it as catching up on that sleep the Pegasus Galaxy's been robbing you of."

Rodney stared down at him.

"You're insane," he declared after a moment.

"I'm really not."

"You lie to me about the Etharans needing help —"

"Creative restructuring of the truth."

"— and then you kidnap me — "

"Expediting required time off."

" — and now you expect me to sleep with you and then go flying off to God knows where."

"Not with me, no. But sleep, yes," John said, hitching his thumb at the empty bed on the other side of the nightstand.

"You know what I meant," Rodney grumbled, pulling the LSD from his jacket pocket, where he'd stashed it during the physical. "You feel free to take a nap, Colonel. I'm not tired and I'm not going to— hey!"

John snatched the life signs detector from Rodney's hand. He tucked it under his pillow and leaned back again. "No toys, Rodney. Sleep."

A look of terror flashed across Rodney's face, smothered quickly with a murderous scowl. "Give. That. Back," he snarled. "Now."

Well. That was new.

Eyes on Rodney, John slowly slid the LSD out from under the pillow and laid it on the nightstand. As soon as his hand left it, Rodney snatched up the device and stuffed it back into his jacket.

"Rodney — " John started, but Rodney was already waving his words away.

"I just . . . I'll try to sleep, all right?" he said, his tone equal parts self-conscious and defensive. He flopped down on the other bed, shoes and all.

It wasn't the reaction John had been hoping for, but a grudging agreement to sleep seemed the best he was going to get tonight. He shut off the bedside lamp. Light from the hallway spilled in from a crack under the door, leaving the room dim but not dark. John heard Rodney shuffle and shift, then sigh unhappily.

"Hey," Rodney said after a few minutes, his voice softening with sleep, "why are we sharing a room, anyway?"

"The other quarters were taken," John lied.

The nightmare came at 2 a.m., and it was as bad as John expected.

He woke to Rodney thrashing, kicking desperately at the blankets that had wound around his legs. John was quickly beside him, one hand on his arm, the other working at the tangle of blankets.

"Hey, Rodney, it's just a dream," he said softly, hoping he could break the other man free of the nightmare without having to wake him up.

But Rodney kept dreaming, twisting and kicking even when his legs were free of the blankets. He shouted, hoarse and high-pitched, "Run!" His hands wrung the edge of his pillow and he whispered pleadingly to it, "Work. Oh, god. Please, please work."

Forget sliding Rodney out of the nightmare without waking him, John just wanted him the hell out of it. "Rodney," he said loudly, shaking him. He threw his command voice into it. "McKay!"

But the nightmare stayed firm. Rodney curled onto his side, gripping the pillow and pulling it with him. "Can't get it to work. It won't. I can't."

John put his hand on the back of Rodney's neck. His skin was warm, slicked with sweat. "It's all right, buddy."

"I can't." Rodney sobbed the last words. "I can't."

"It's all right," John said again. He swallowed the lump in his throat and started rubbing slow circles between Rodney's shoulder blades, trying to ground him. "You don't need to get it to work, Rodney. You didn't need to."

It was another few minutes before Rodney came out of it, his eyes glazed but wary when he found John sitting on the edge of his bed, his voice hoarse when he asked, "What?"

"Nightmare," John explained, returning to his own bed to give Rodney some space to pull himself together.

But it wasn't space he wanted, apparently. It was distance.

"I'm done sleeping," Rodney announced, flinging the blankets aside. "Let's get out of here."

It was snowing when they left the mountain.

"Please tell me we're at least going some place warm," Rodney said, tugging at the gloves he'd borrowed from Teal'c — two sizes too big and bright red. When John had Rodney pack for two days on Ethara, a cold weather planet, he figured he'd bring the kind of clothes needed to get him through a couple of days of Colorado in January, enough to tide him over until they got where they were going and bought what they needed there. Apparently, though, gloves hadn't made Rodney's packing list.

"Maybe warm," John hedged, turning up the SUV's heat. "Maybe colder. You like skiing, right?"

John had his eyes on the road, but he could feel Rodney's glare. "Oh, you're evil, Sheppard. Evil."

They drove for a couple of hours, the snow falling steadily. Then heavily. Then sideways in the wind. John flicked the SUV's lights from high beams to low to gain some visibility. It wasn't enough, though, and he slowed from 60 mph to 50 to 40.

At one point Rodney dozed, his head propped against the passenger side window, the cold glass fogging with his breath. He woke when the wind started, and he was now leaning forward, peering through the swirl of snow with kind of intensity he reserved for, well, lately, for fixing a broken life signs detector.

"We're not lost," John said preemptively.

"Of course not. Because this looks exactly like the six lane highway that takes us to the airport," Rodney said, waving at the bumpy wooded side road John had taken instead.

"Missed the highway on ramp," John admitted. He flicked the lights to high again, then back to low. He couldn't see anything but white.

Rodney opened the glove box and started digging around. "I swear, you have the directional sense of a lemming."

John grinned. "I thought I had the survival instincts of a lemming."

"That too," Rodney said, pulling a map triumphantly from the glove box, only to toss it to the backseat a moment later. "Who the hell puts a Las Vegas road map in a Colorado rental car? Seriously, I want names."

John leaned over to click the glove box shut, one hand on the wheel, attention divided between the road and Rodney. "You know, Rodney, you could try — "

It was a streak across the road, a blur of fur and legs, and John had enough time to shout, "Fuck!" but not enough time to think about what he was doing as he yanked the wheel to the left to avoid hitting the animal.

The SUV was equipped with four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, state-of-the-art tires, none of which did them any good the second those tires caught the unplowed side of the road. The SUV fishtailed and lost traction, hydroplaning on six inches of fresh snow. John held the wheel and tapped the brakes, fighting to regain control, but the vehicle spun.

Blinding white.

Then nothing.

John woke flat on his back, dazed and cold, a blizzard of snowflakes twirling and dancing against the dark sky in front of him. He blinked away the first few flakes that landed on his eyelashes, but more came and he just wasn't up for that kind of manual labor. He closed his eyes.

"Sheppard? Crap! Hey. Sheppard?"

With effort, John opened his eyes.

Rodney appeared above him, bright blood splashed along his nose and mouth, snowflakes dancing around his head like a halo. The snow crunched as Rodney dropped to his knees beside him with a huff.

"So this vacation?" Rodney said, stripping off the horrible red gloves and gently working his fingers behind John's head to check for injuries. "Turns out it's a lot like work."

John agreed by passing out.

Time stuttered and jumped. One moment John was stumbling his way through the snow with Rodney shouldering half his weight, the next he was hunched over, shaking and retching, and the next he was moving again. There were trees. There was a cave.

There was Rodney squatting on the ground, manipulating the innards of his life signs detector with a thin twig.

John blinked.

Yes, Meredith Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, Atlantis Chief Scientist and self-described smartest man in two galaxies. . . was definitely poking at a piece of Ancient technology with a stick.

"Hey," John said. His throat was so raw that the word came out little more than a soft croak, but Rodney's head snapped up.

"Hey," Rodney greeted, tucking the LSD into his jacket pocket. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at John. "You look like you might actually be coherent this time."

John wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"Okay," John said. His head was pounding. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off again.

"No, no, no you don't, Sheppard. Hey. Hey!"

John felt a not-so-gentle tap to his cheek and he swatted the offender away. "Go 'way. Sl'ping."

"No, you've slept enough. Wakey, wakey, Colonel."

John kept swatting until his hand was unceremoniously caught and pinned to his chest. The tapping continued.

"R'dney," he growled, turning his head away. "Stop it."

"As soon as you open your eyes."

John groaned and pried his eyes open. He only managed a squint at first, but it seemed to satisfy Rodney. The tapping stopped.

There were in cave, close enough to the opening that John could see the snow still falling by moonlight but far enough away that he couldn't feel the wind. In fact, he was cool, but not freezing. John woke up more, mentally shaking off the lethargy. Rodney was crouched beside him, between him and the entrance. Backlit by the moon, he was both shadowed and pale.

Rodney freed the hand John had been using to swat him away, but he kept his own hand flat on John's chest. Light enough not to hurt him but firm enough that John couldn't help but get the message to stay put.

"What's your name?" Rodney asked.

Oh, Christ.

"Rodney, just let me up —"

"Goody, you know my name," Rodney said sarcastically. "Let's try yours."

John sighed. Rodney tended to get over eager with the first aid. "Sheppard. John Sheppard. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Now let me up. "

"Recite Bernoulli's equation."

John frowned. "Shouldn't you ask me what month it is?"

"Please. You can't remember what month it is when you don't have a concussion. The physics of flying, on the other hand . . . . " Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. "Bernoulli's."

John winced at the snapping but complied. Rodney wasn't going to leave him alone otherwise. "P plus one half pv squared — "

"Good, good. That's good. Okay." Rodney withdrew his hand, looking relieved. "You're better than you were. But I still wouldn't — "

But Sheppard had already leveraged himself onto his elbows, ignoring the sharp pain that told him he had at least a couple of broken ribs. He was halfway to sitting upright when the nausea hit him like a wave and he doubled over, twisting to the side, away from Rodney, gagging. His stomach was already empty, but his body did its best to purge itself of something. He dry heaved until beads of sweat sprung out on his forehead, until his stomach cramped and his ribs felt they were going to snap in two. His head throbbed mercilessly.

Something cold settled on the back of his neck and John startled, sucking in a shuddering breath. His stomach paused in its mutiny. John took another breath. Then another. His stomach stopped twisting; the nausea slid away.

"Th-thanks," John said. He was drenched in sweat, wrung out and shaking. He leaned back on his hands, not steady enough to sit up but not willing to give in and lie down again either.

Rodney removed the torn bit of cloth he had placed on the back of John's neck, tossing it in the corner of the cave. He snagged his pack from nearby and began rummaging through it.

"If it's one thing we're not lacking around here it's cold compresses. Emphasis on the cold," Rodney said. He pulled out his orange fleece and eyed John skeptically. "Think you're done vomiting for a while? I've already changed your shirt twice and this is the last one we've got."

John blinked in surprise and looked down. Sure enough, he was wearing one of Rodney's long-sleeve uniform shirts, probably part of the change of clothes packed for Ethara. John looked up. "How long have I — "

"In and out for two hours," Rodney said. He apparently decided John was well enough to risk the fleece on, because he helped him shift until he was leaning against the cave wall and then proceeded to strip off the old shirt. "What do you remember?"

"The accident," John said, shivering as the cold air hit his already-chilled skin. Rodney swept the fleece over his head. It was short — the hem just barely skimmed the top of John's pants — but it was dry and warm and felt like heaven. "Not much after that."

"Your seatbelt snapped and your airbag didn't deploy, thank you American engineering," Rodney informed him, tossing the damp shirt into the corner next to the cold cloth. He started digging through his pack again. "We hit a tree. A bunch of trees, actually. Hard. You and everything that wasn't nailed down went flying through the windshield. Luckily, the 'everything that wasn't nailed down' broke the glass before you did. The SUV flipped and landed in a ditch. I found you about 30 yards away."

John remembered Rodney frantically calling him while he lay in the snow. He also remembered the blood on Rodney's face. John held his aching ribs protectively as he leaned forward, straining his eyes to see how badly Rodney was injured. The cave was too dim. "You okay?"

"No," Rodney said matter-of-factly, rummaging through the pack. "I've got massive bruising from my seatbelt, possibly kidney damage. I'm pretty sure the air bag broke my nose and it definitely burned my arm so badly I'm scarred for life. I've got several very painful and likely-to-get-infected cuts from flying glass. Hypothermia. And also? I pulled a muscle dragging your ass a quarter mile to this cave. You're not as light as you look."

John slumped back, still holding his ribs. Rodney was fine. "So where are we? How far back to civilization?"

Rodney stopped digging through the pack and looked up with an expression of resigned dismay. He sighed. "I'd been hoping you could tell me."

Rodney informed him that he most certainly could have fixed their damaged SUV — "I made a city fly, Colonel. I think I can handle a 2008 Ford Escape." — but the vehicle had landed upside down in the snow. It wasn't going anywhere without a tow truck.

Rodney had looted the SUV of anything useful. John's bag had been lost during the crash, but they had the pack Rodney had planned on bringing to Ethara, which included a handful of Powerbars, three bottles of water, a first aid kit, and a laptop. They also had two emergency blankets (which John now realized he'd been wrapped in) and a flashlight.

Rodney had left the map of Las Vegas.

He'd brought the broken LSD.

"So, where were we flying to?" Rodney asked warily, tearing into the wrapper of a mint-chip Powerbar. He handed the bar to John. "Here."

It smelled minty and sweet and, God, John wasn't hungry at all, but he bit off a tiny corner and forced himself to chew and swallow because mint bars were the only way to settle his stomach when he had a concussion. "Hawaii."

Rodney raised an eyebrow. "That's not what I. . . really?"

John started to nod, but the cave tilted and spun, so he kept his head very still and said instead, "I surf, you —" get over MX1-124 " — nap."

Rodney looked cautiously impressed. "That's very. . . that's. Hawaii. Huh." Then his expression shifted to dread. "How long?"

"Ten days," John said, confused.

Then it hit him.

Ronon and Teyla weren't going to come around the corner. Atlantis wasn't a radio call away. They were not in the middle of a mission-gone-wrong in Pegasus with Woolsey waiting for them to report in. They were on vacation, on Earth, not expected anywhere by anyone who knew them for 10 days.

John's stomach twisted and it had nothing to do with his concussion.

"Yeah," John said, tossing the remaining Powerbar back to Rodney and gingerly leaning his pounding head against the cool cave wall. "No one's going to be looking for us for a while."

John wanted to get moving.

Rodney wanted him not to keel over from the serious concussion/broken ribs/ "whatever other injuries you're hiding and don't tell me there aren't any."

The compromise: they would wait and go at dawn.

It was an hour before darkness gave way to the first weak strains of daylight. While Rodney was packing up, John stood, using the cave wall for support until he was completely vertical. His ribs ached and his head pounded, but he figured he could deal. Until he turned his head at a question Rodney asked and the cave started to spin.

"Sheppard? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop!"

John didn't even realize he had stumbled forward until he ran into Rodney. Or Rodney caught him. Either way, Wall of McKay. He grabbed a fistful of Rodney's jacket to hold himself steady and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the dizziness to stop already.

"Okay, we'll just. Um. Okay. Easy now."

He felt himself lowered to the ground then pushed gently back until he was resting against the wall. Again. Dammit.

After a few moments John risked opening his eyes and found the cave was no longer spinning. Rodney was crouched in front of him. John held his gaze and tried to project I'm fine.

"Yeah," Rodney answered, as if John had spoken out loud. "You aren't going anywhere."

John disagreed. Vehemently. For 20 minutes. It was cold, they were lost, they had little food and no one was coming to look for them. They needed to get going and they needed to get going now.

"Sheppard, Jesus, you can't even stand."

That was Rodney's argument. John hadn't found a way around it yet.

"Look," Rodney said, shaking out the two emergency blankets he'd been packing up when John's world turned Tilt-A-Whirl, "I know an ordinary car crash is nothing compared to your average monthly suicide run. But let me remind you that you flipped over a 3,500-pound vehicle and were thrown through the windshield. I think that's worth taking it easy for a few hours so you don't add 'permanent brain damage' to your list of injuries."

John opened his mouth to point out he'd dealt with plenty of concussions on missions and, by the way, he was the team leader here and getting them home was his responsibility, but Rodney cut him off with a sharp look.

"And don't pull that stoic team leader crap on me, Sheppard. I'm perfectly capable of getting us back." Rodney moved to drape one of the blankets over John's torso, but he stopped suddenly and pulled back. He thrust his chin into the air, defiant, even as his eyes wavered with uncharacteristic uncertainty. "Unless you don't think I can."

John flashed back to the FUBAR that was MX1-124. He knew Rodney needed him to say "Of course you can handle it" and "Sure, McKay, take the lead on this one" and "I trust you." And the stupid thing was he did trust Rodney. Trusted him with his life. But did he dare let Rodney take on the responsibility of both their lives so soon after —

His silence answered for him.

Rodney snorted derisively and tossed the blankets at him. "You know what? It doesn't even matter. We're not leaving until you can walk straight. Let me know when that is."

Rodney crossed to the other side of the cave and sat down, pulling out the LSD. Within seconds, he was completely absorbed.

John sighed and closed his eyes.

The sun was high outside the cave's entrance and the air had warmed to a balmy 35 degrees by the time John woke. He could turn his head without the world spinning. He could stand and walk and nudge Rodney's booted foot with his own to get his attention.

"So," Rodney said, looking up, "no major brain damage, huh?"

It was a McKay-style peace offering. John's lips twitched and he gave his own. "Not yet."

They packed up and headed out, slogging through the snow but warmed by the sun.

And if John's chest ached more than it had before, he wasn't about to bring it up.

"I think I've had this nightmare," Rodney said as they trudged west.

"Which part? The snow, the cold, or getting lost?" John asked, tossing a glance back at Rodney. He'd taken the lead early on and Rodney hadn't fought him on it. Which was good. Definitely. . . good.

Rodney raised a surprised eyebrow, as if he thought John should have known what he was talking about. "The trees."

John coughed. He slowed his pace and looked around. "The trees?"

"They all look alike. Like clones. Tall, foreboding clones." Rodney fell into step beside him.

John coughed again and the pain in his chest ratcheted up a notch. Damn air was too cold, too dry. "Clone trees. Sure."

He coughed a third time, and this time there was the slightest wheeze.

They stopped at a boulder that was big enough for both of them to sit on and split half a power bar and a bottle of water. The food they had to conserve, the water less so since they were surrounded by snow and snow could be melted if needed.

"Don't get me wrong, knowing for certain the water doesn't contain an alien microbe that'll devour our brains? Nice change of pace," Rodney said, handing John the bottle. "But there is the embarrassment factor of getting lost on our own planet. In your country. Just hours from Stargate Command. Ronon's going to laugh his ass off."

John nodded, not trusting himself to speak. They'd been resting for five minutes — at least five minutes considering they'd almost finished the Powerbar and John was taking tiny, tiny bites — but he was still breathing hard from their hike.

John took a deep breath. He just needed to catch his breath. That's all. Just needed to —

"Ready?"

Rodney was in front of him.

John nodded and got up.

"We've officially missed the plane," Rodney said.

John automatically glanced at his watch. The numbers blurred in front of him.

"I mean, we officially missed it a couple of hours ago, but I just thought of it now," Rodney said, slogging through the snow a step behind him. "There really was a plane, right? This wasn't some elaborate plot to get me committed or ship me off to Earth? Because I didn't really believe you on Atlantis."

All of John's energy went into putting one foot in front of the other. It left him no breath to answer.

"I just wanted to say the vacation idea was, you know. You know. Not the kidnapping, though. I'm sure it was greatly satisfying for you, Sheppard, but I don't care how annoyed you were, you don't just shove someone through an intergalactic wormhole. But the other thing, that was —"

John never heard what the other thing was. He collapsed between one step and the next.

John came to with Rodney mid rant, the words dropping like stones from somewhere above and behind him.

". . . I knew there was something else wrong. Dammit, Sheppard. You and your suicidal, self-sacrificing, asinine attempts at . . . ."

He was flat on his back, again. Looking up at the sky, again. The whole struggling-to-breath thing was new, though.

Whoopee.

Suddenly the sky moved, stuttering at first in time to the crunch of snow, then sweeping past with speed.

John rolled his head to the side. The sky wasn't moving; he was.

He grazed his fingers along the ground, expecting to feel the cold dryness of snow. Instead he brushed the smooth material of their emergency blankets. One underneath him. One on top. Behind him, Rodney's rant was punctuated by grunts.

He had fashioned a makeshift sled and was pulling John through the snow.

John opened his mouth lay into him. Rodney should have found a safe place to leave him and then gone on. This was stupid, reckless. Rodney wasn't up to a rescue mission and John wasn't —

John coughed, wheezing as he tried and failed to draw in breath. He clutched at the blanket underneath him, concentrating on sucking in enough of the cold, sweet air to keep the gray spots from dancing along the edge of his vision. He coughed harder, and this time John felt something give. A thin line of liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth and he let go of the blanket just long enough to swipe at the drool with the back of his hand.

His hand came away smeared red.

The one-man sleigh slid to a stop and then Rodney was beside him, gently wiping the blood away with the same cold cloth he'd used on the back of John's neck in the cave. Rodney wasn't panicking.

John was pretty sure that meant this wasn't the first time he'd coughed up blood, just the first time he was aware of it.

John's heart hammered in his ears, but he caught the ghost of Rodney's words as they drifted by.

"I'll get you home."

In his dream, John was back on MX1-124.

He knew it was a dream. But the whine of the Wraith darts sounded real and the panicked villagers felt real as rough hands grabbed his vest and small hands tugged on his arm and terrified voices begged him and his team to please, please help them. Even in a dream he couldn't force himself to turn away.

"Which way, Rodney?" John asked, swinging into his arms a dark-haired, dirty-faced little girl who had been clutching his leg. She wasn't much bigger than Torren.

Rodney frowned and punched at the LSD. "I don't. . . dammit!"

John craned his head over the top of the little girl's and did a rough count as the villagers streamed from their homes. Three hundred people, four hundred, four fifty. Way too many to fit in the jumper. They had to shelter here and they had to do it now.

"McKay," John growled, trying to keep his tone calm even as the villagers panicked around them, "we need to know where those Wraith are."

But Rodney was already flustered. He tore open the LSD and frantically swapped crystals.

"McKay!" John snapped.

"Working!" Rodney snapped back without looking up.

A third and fourth Wraith dart screamed overhead. If he hadn't been sure before, John was sure now: four darts meant a major culling and a major culling meant a landing party. Wraith on foot and headed this way.

As if reading his thoughts, the little girl trembled and buried her face in John's jacket. John tightened his hold.

Off to the side, Teyla caught his eye and gave him a nod. She and Ronon had rounded up the villagers. They were ready to go.

If only they knew which direction was free.

"McKay," John hissed. "Now."

He expected Rodney to bark back at him, to laud his own brilliance, to point in the right goddamn direction. Instead, he looked up, wide-eyed and ashen.

"I don't, don't," he stammered, then swallowed hard. He looked lost. "I don't know."

A fifth dart tore across the sky, and around them the villagers shrieked in terror. John stared at Rodney. "What do you mean you don't know?"

"It's not working and I can't get it. . . it won't . . . I can't get us out of here — " He took a sharp breath as if the situation suddenly hit him. "Run, Sheppard. Take everyone and run."

As if Rodney intended to stay and pound sense into a broken LSD until the Wraith arrived, his penance for failing.

John did run, but he grabbed Rodney's tac vest first and hauled him along with them until he got the hint and began running on his own. The gate, which was certainly guarded by now, was south. The darts had been heading north. But the Wraith had a tendency to veer off and send ground troops into villages from a whole different direction. So east or west, right or left, a 50-50 chance of choosing the Wraith-free path.

John chose east.

It was not the right answer.

They lost half the villagers when they saw the ground troops and panicked, rushing from the woods and out into the open, where the darts picked them off. They lost another hundred when they bucked John's order to hunker down in a network of caves and instead tried to run for the hills.

By the time it was over, the 450 villagers had been reduced to 125, a quarter of those with serious injuries. Only 10 children survived, one of them the little girl John carried.

John was so busy dealing with the new refugees that it took him a full day to realize Rodney had collected a supply of MREs and spare LSD parts and had disappeared to his auxiliary lab. He refused to come out, refused to open the door, refused to say more than a few words to anyone who called him over the radio.

His excuse: he was fixing the LSD.

"Maybe it's just. . . broken," John told him on day two, exasperated and closer to pleading than he'd admit. "Things break, McKay. Sometimes beyond repair."

"Not for me," Rodney answered. John could blame the radio for the thin quality to Rodney's voice, but not the hard edge to his words.

Before John could respond, Rodney severed the connection.

After four days, when even an impromptu visit by Carson couldn't coax him out of the lab, John got Radek to bypass Rodney's computer protocols, hack into the lab's security camera and then leave him with the feed. At 2 a.m. he watched Rodney pitch the LSD across the room and tear the lab apart with his bare hands, howling with a wordless frustration that was so wrong coming from him that it raised the tiny hairs on the back of John's neck.

The next day, when Atlantis had to open an emergency wormhole to Earth so Keller could replenish the supplies she'd exhausted treating the villagers, John told Rodney the Etharans' shield was down.

Ethara was the next planet over from MX1-124.

"I already told you, Colonel, — you and Jennifer and Woolsey and everyone — I'm fine. . . ."

John was drowning.

He coughed and gagged but he couldn't clear his lungs and he couldn't draw air. He bucked, chest heaving as if he could catch a breath by getting a few inches higher, but he couldn't breathe, couldn't —

A pair of strong hands rolled him onto his side and this time the fluid in his lungs expelled when he coughed, making room for air. For long minutes he alternated between gasping and coughing. The hands left, but he managed to stay steady on his side by himself.

He felt ridiculously victorious about that.

When he was strong enough to open his eyes, the first thing John saw was a fine spray of blood on the snow in front of him.

The second thing he saw was Rodney, sitting cross-legged and hunched in the snow, his laptop perched on one knee, pieces of the LSD fanned out around him.

John's heart sank. They were in a clearing, affording them the easiest movement they'd had all day, but Rodney wasn't moving.

"Sheppard."

"John. Look at me."

John rolled his eyes up to Rodney's face. His eyes glittered.

"Hold on."

Then the air wavered and shimmered around him and the Colorado snow disappeared.

John woke slowly, pushing through the thick fog of drugs to emerge amidst dim lights and a sharp antiseptic smell.

He felt heavy, weighted by exhaustion and a deep all-over ache that told him the real pain was being kept at bay by really good drugs. His eyes slid closed against his will and he struggled to open them again. Rodney?

He didn't have to look far.

Rodney was sitting beside his bed, his arms propped on the mattress, his head pillowed on his arms. A slack hand rested on John's foot and his face was turned toward the head of the bed — probably watching John sleep, waiting for him to wake up. But it was John who watched Rodney sleep now, his breathing deep and steady and hypnotic. He was snoring softly, a sign he'd been asleep for a while.

Without nightmares.

John smiled sleepily and snuggled deeper under the warm blankets. He watched Rodney for another few moments and then let his eyes drift closed.

When the fog lifted a second time, it was to the clack-clack-clack of computer keys. John didn't need to open his eyes to know he was home and —

"R'dny?" he croaked, the word igniting a fire in his throat. He swallowed desperately to sooth it, but his mouth was too dry.

A sliver of cold slipped between his lips and John whimpered a little as it melted and trickled down his sore throat.

"Yes, yes, ice chips good. Pulmonary contusion and ventilator bad. Though if I never see ice again, or snow, or anything really white for that matter. . . ."

A second chip slipped between his lips.

John opened his eyes. For a moment he fought a wave of disorientation, because yes, there was Rodney but no, not Atlantis.

The SGC.

"How?" John asked, his throat coated just enough that speaking wasn't agony.

Rodney slipped him another chip. He looked smug. "I reconfigured the LSD into a signal booster. Once we hit a clearing, I hooked into the wireless network, piggybacked on every signal I could find and — " He waved his hands as if making the SGC magically appear "— voila."

John blinked. It took his drug-fogged brain a second to catch up. "You sent an e-mail."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "If you want to think about it simplistically, then yes." He grinned. "Several."

John frowned, remembering shimmering gold rather than ambulance lights. "How did —"

"Daedalus was in orbit. They got us out as soon as the right person got my message."

John didn't want to know.

"The president wishes you a speedy recovery, by the way."

John groaned. Rodney slipped him another ice chip.

When John had enough, Rodney put the cup on the table, took his seat beside the bed and resumed typing. John watched him work. His eyes were no longer bloodshot or underlined with shadows. The tense, exhausted frown was gone. But how long would it be before another LSD broke beyond repair? Or one of the jumpers? Or another team member?

"You don't have to fix everything, McKay."

Rodney looked up. "I'm pretty sure I do if we like living in a 10,000-year-old floating city."

John ignored the flip answer. "It was my decision to take the villagers east, not yours."

Rodney shook his head, dismissing John's words. "A decision you wouldn't have had to make if I could have — "

"How long did you spend on that damned LSD? Four days on Atlantis. Another day here. Did it ever work? No. It was broken, buddy. No one could fix it, not even you."

Rodney stared at him. "Over 300 people died, John. Three hundred. I had to know what went wrong."

"The technology failed, Rodney, you didn't." John paused. He was getting uncomfortably close to talking about feelings and emotions, and that was territory in which they just didn't tread. But if it would keep Rodney from locking himself away again — "You didn't fail me."

Rodney opened his mouth, then closed it again. John couldn't be sure — he'd never seen it happen before — but it looked like Rodney didn't know what to say.

After a few minutes, John's eyes grew heavy and the drugs started dragging him back down. He was just about to close his eyes when Rodney poked him in the arm.

"So, uh, before you fall asleep," Rodney said. "Lam says you'll be fine in a few days. That two-week vacation's pretty much dwindled down to a week now and we obviously missed the plane. But Jeannie's offered to put us up for a few days. If we want."

You didn't fail me, either.

Liketheriverrun requested: John and Rodney lost (the author decides where... alien woods or in the city itself or back on Earth or anything else you can come up with... wherever you want it to be) and, of course, John is hurt with Rodney trying to care for him and get them back home.

Thus my ultra creative title. :)

Liketheriver: Thank you for a fantastic prompt. Hope you like your fic! Sorry for the wait.