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Knowing Michael, they were braced for danger as it was, and they all knew Rodney's tones well enough that when he hissed, "Oh, shit," and then shouted, "Get out of here, now—" none of them so much as glanced over to check how wide his eyes were. They just moved.
The mountain moved with them, shaking under their boots, and further up slope came a roar like the thunder of a waterfall, crashing down faster than anyone could run. Teyla had been at their six, the furthest from the metal doors built into the mountainside. The avalanche didn't sweep over her so much as brush her aside, knocking her into the thick snowdrifts caught between the trees alongside the trail.
She was thrown topsy-turvy, blinded by white and cold. By the time she struggled free of the drift, the avalanche had slid to a stop, a static river of churned snow and ice and earth filling the channel of the path they had climbed just minutes before.
The trail and the doors had been a trap, Teyla realized; in retrospect it was obvious. Had Rodney deduced this himself, an instant too late? Or had his computer given him another warning of the imminent snowslide?
"Rodney," Teyla called into her radio. "John. Ronon." Her voice didn't echo, the snow dampening it before it could carry, not breaking the mountain's frozen hush. She listened, but nothing came over the radio but hissing white noise. Nor were there any further rumblings from up the mountainside. Cautiously she stepped into the avalanche's river, forging through the tumbled snow like she was wading against a current.
A muffled growl and an explosion of snow some paces down-slope warned her before Ronon's head broke free, arms working, tossing up more loose snow. Teyla made her way over and helped dig out his legs. He twitched and growled when she prodded him for injuries, but stood without assistance, brushing caked snow off his coat as he scanned up and down the still mountainside.
"Sheppard?" he demanded. "McKay?"
Teyla shook her head. "They were closer to the entrance; I do not think they could have made it out of the avalanche's path."
Ronon turned his head to stare unerringly at where the door had been, now buried, not even the top of its rusty metal frame showing. "Trap," he said.
"Most likely," Teyla agreed.
"Sheppard!" Ronon's shout carried much farther than her own call, but there was still no answer on the silent mountainside. The sun shone bright and blinding on the snow, only a slight breeze stirring the boughs of the tall pines.
Ronon looked at her. "If I go back to the gate, get help—"
It had taken them almost two hours to hike up the mountain. Ronon alone might make it back in half that, but there was still no place on the mountainside for a jumper to land, and any teams sent would have no path now; they would have to struggle up through the avalanche's fill. "If they are buried deep," Teyla said, "even if I find them, I may have trouble digging them out alone. Atlantis is scheduled to contact us within two hours; if we have not found them by then..."
Ronon frowned, but nodded. "Sheppard!" he bellowed again. "McKay!"
Teyla cast an anxious look upslope. "If you stir another avalanche—"
"Won't," Ronon said. "McKay said it's summer here. No more snow to come down. We were lucky."
"I'm sure Rodney would agree," Teyla said, ironically enough to make up for Rodney's absence, she hoped. He had spent most of the hike up complaining about Michael's failure to build his labs in tropical paradises.
Ronon flashed her a quick smirk across the snowdrifts. "He'd be twice as unhappy with twice this much snow on top of him."
That their teammates might not be feeling anything now was a thought neither she nor Ronon would speak aloud. At one time, Teyla would have questioned such denial, but they had both learned other lessons in the past few years. She tramped across the churned snow, listening and searching for anything, a stray glove, a strangely shaped mound. One of them would find something, and she did not consider the alternatives, anymore than she considered the bite of wind against her cheeks or the prickling of her chill fingers.
So it was no surprise when Ronon called down the slope, "Hey!" and she ran back up, helped him sweep away snow until they had uncovered most of a boot. Ronon didn't wait any longer, just took hold of the leg and bodily hauled John out of the snow.
He had instinctively curled himself into a ball when the avalanche hit, shielding his face and protecting his bones; now out of the snow he unrolled like a round-beetle, stretched and coughed and blinked up at them, squinting in the sunlight. "Ronon, Teyla," he wheezed. "You guys all right?"
"We are uninjured, John," Teyla told him. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," John said, extending a hand for Ronon to pull him to his feet. He moved stiffly, but Teyla studied him to verify he wasn't favoring either leg, and he swung his arms freely. "Rodney?"
"We haven't found him yet," Teyla said.
Behind his fur-fringed hood, John's lashes were frosted in ice and his face was pale, set and still as the mountainside. "He was right ahead of me when it hit," he panted, winded and trying to breathe the freezing air shallowly. "I pushed him toward the door—he's got to be close."
The lab entrance's overhanging door might have provided some shelter from the avalanche's force. "We will find him, John," Teyla told him. Ronon was already digging again, heaving aside armfuls of snow. Teyla moved in to help him, the exertion warming her body and keeping her mind focused, while John paced widening circles downhill.
He might have told one of them to go back to Atlantis to get help, or else organized a more strategic search, as his military had trained him to run. Instead he said nothing, asked nothing of his team as he stumbled in the snow—dazed from the avalanche's beating, or else heartsick with fear and concern, and Teyla was about to bring this lapse to his attention, when John called, "Over here!"
He wasn't looking at the ground when they reached him, but rather turning a circle in place, head cocked and eyes distant. "Where is he—" Teyla began to ask, but John raised his hand.
"Listen," he said, "hear that?"
"Yeah," Ronon said immediately, before Teyla made it out herself—faint and stifled, but so regular as to be distinct against the mountain's silence: the soft, repeating alert of a working life-signs detector.
"Where's it coming from?" John demanded.
Ronon tilted his head one way, then the other, and pointed. "Up there."
The mountainside slanted up sharply at the edge of the former trail; the slope was so steep that the snow hadn't collected deeply, patches of bare rock showing among the trees. Teyla, being the lightest of them, easily climbed it by grasping pine boughs and pulling herself up.
It was caught in the crooked branches of a stunted tree, an ice-flecked bundle of orange that she recognized as Rodney's wool hat—a tuque, he had called it. When she unfolded the hat, she found the life-sign detector tucked inside, chirping loud and steady.
Rodney must have set it to work continuously, rather than only in an ATA user's hand. Teyla looked at the little screen, and while she had not dared to doubt, her heart yet gave a glad little leap. "I have it," she called down, smiling. "And there are four life signs."
She tossed the hat and detector to John, then let go of the tree branch and slid down the slope. Ronon caught her at the bottom, steadying her in the snow. John had stuffed the tuque under his coat and was examining the detector, pacing to triangulate from their three signals to locate the fourth—a little fainter, it looked to Teyla's eyes, but she hoped that was only a trick of the light.
Ronon glanced at the tree up the slope, considering. "Good throw," he remarked. "For McKay."
"He knew we'd need it to find him," John said, abstractly, not really like he was telling them what they already knew, more as if he needed to reply and there was nothing else on his mind for him to say. He plowed through the snow, tripping on ice chunks and kicking them aside, until he had thrashed his way to the west corner of the door, a little further away than where Ronon had been digging. "Here, he's right here," he said, tucking the detector into his pocket, and dropped to his knees to dig.
Teyla joined him on one side and Ronon on the other, all of them working fast and eagerly, energized by the detector's promise, the bright little dot pledging that their teammate lived. They had managed to move a good heap of snow when Ronon growled, "Stop," so firmly that they both quit moving instantly.
"Loose snow under here," Ronon said. He opened his gloved hand, releasing a powder of fine white flakes, whirling like dust motes in the breeze. "We keep digging straight down, the crust could collapse, bury McKay deeper."
Teyla did not have much experience with snow; Athos had never gotten more than a hand-width's fall even in the worst winters, and she had never cared for the colder planets. But Ronon had hid in more than one frozen wasteland, places the Wraith wouldn't go if they did not have to. He knew about avalanches, far more than she did.
John just nodded, rocking back on his heels. "We'll dig at an angle," he said, so calm his voice might have sounded light, but his eyes were shadowed under his hood. "Make a tunnel to him. You guys, move back—"
"I've got longer arms," Ronon said; he was stronger, too, but he didn't need to say that. John looked up at him, then nodded again and stood to get out of his way.
Ronon worked fast, lying down on his side and using both hands to clear a deeper hole in the snow. He dug at an angle, burrowing in the loose snow, while John studied the life-signs detector. "He's still a good three meters down, four, maybe."
"There's more ice here," Ronon said suddenly. "Can't punch through it."
"Kick it?" John suggested.
"Might cause a cave-in."
"You told me once that you used your blaster to boil water," Teyla said. "Could you melt the ice?"
Ronon looked doubtful. "It doesn't work so great on snow." But he pulled his blaster, looked at John questioningly.
John only hesitated a moment, and whatever he was speculating could not be read on his face. "Do it."
Ronon switched the blaster to stun, lay down again to take aim and fired once. He reached down the hole, frowned, and then shot the ice again. This time he grinned. "That did it."
John dropped to his stomach on the snow and peered down through the hole. "There's a clear pocket," he said. "Couple meters deep, no snow, the door must've shielded it—shit! Rodney!"
"He is there?" Teyla asked.
"I can see his legs—can't see his face. Rodney!" John hit his radio. "Rescue party's here, McKay, rise and shine!"
"He may be unconscious," Teyla said. When she crouched to look over John's shoulder, she could just make out the toes of Rodney's boots. The sun was bright enough to light the empty pocket with ambient reflections off the snow, blue shadows like an underwater grotto.
"He got banged up in the avalanche," Ronon said.
"Damn it." John glanced at the life-signs detector again, the fainter dot glowing beside their own signs. Then he unclipped his P-90, handed it to Ronon, and took off his tac vest. "I'm going down there, make sure he's all right. You guys keep digging here."
Teyla's back was already sore from moving snow, and the cold was no longer numbing her bruises but digging into them like hard fingers, aches penetrating to bone through her parka. She might not complain as much as Rodney, but she had never loved the winter. She longed for the warm blankets back in her rooms on Atlantis, for the ever-growing weight of Torren giggling in her arms and Kanaan's gentle touch.
But those comforts would mean nothing, if only three of them returned through the Stargate. Better she was here than anywhere, if one of her teammates was trapped under this snow. "Understood," she told John, and Ronon nodded, and they both continued to work at the piled snow, while John sat down and slid himself into the narrow tunnel, feet-first.
They heard the shift and crunch of snow as he hit bottom, soft swearing, and then, "Rodney? Hey, you there?"
"John?" Teyla asked.
"He's breathing," John called up. "Pulse is okay, probably slow, for Rodney. He's got a bump on his head, that's why he's out. And he's too damn cold—still shivering, at least."
"Warm him up," Ronon said.
"Yeah, thanks, big guy, I hadn't thought of that," John said, and the chunk of packed snow Teyla was lifting seemed lighter in her arms, hearing his sardonic tone. John might become angry when he was truly afraid, but he would not tease, not so easily.
She continued to dig, listening closely to John below. Through the thick layers of snow she could not hear him move, but near the tunnel she could make out the low, sporadic murmur of his voice. The muttering might be unintelligible but she knew his encouraging tone, the mix of admonishments and cajoling challenge that never failed to make Rodney work better, think faster.
Rodney always did well under life-threatening pressure; would that this be true now as well.
She was near the opening when she heard John's tone change; Ronon too heard, and paused for a moment to listen, as John said, "Hey, Rodney, you with us, buddy?"
The mumbled reply wasn't quite in words, but Teyla smiled to recognize Rodney in it, the irritated exasperation unmistakable even if inarticulate.
"No," John said, answering immediately, as if he were so used to that tone that words were unnecessary, "you've slept long enough, it's time to get up."
"Staff meeting?" Rodney said, or something like it.
"Not now," John told him. "This is more important, come on."
"S'cold," Rodney whined. "Jus' a little longer."
"The sooner you wake up," John said, "the sooner we can get the hell out of here—"
"But I like it here," Rodney said. "You're here. And you're warm, even if you're bony."
"Rodney," John said, with an edge of desperation that made him sound almost angry.
"Hot, even," Rodney said, ignoring him, and his sleep-slurred voice went low with something that distinctly wasn't anger. "In your sloppy soldier way, with the hair, and the shoelaces, and—"
"Rodney," John said again, urgently, not angry and not teasing either, not like this was any joke he was going along with. "Rodney, cut it out, snap out of it. We need to get you out of here and warm you up—"
"Trying to warm up now," Rodney said, and then he made a sharp, awful noise, a shriek choked off in a half-sobbed curse—"Fuck, my leg—"
"Don't move," John said, suddenly brusque and sure.
At Rodney's cry, Teyla ducked to look down into the hole. John had moved Rodney, so she could see his face now, and John's, too. They were lying side by side in the close confines of the pocket, pressed between the walls of snow. John had divested Rodney of his parka and spread it over them, huddled together under the coat, Rodney pulled up against John's chest. John had stuck the orange tuque snug on Rodney's head—it would have been warm, after being tucked under his own parka—and Rodney's face was close to his own, almost cheek to cheek.
Rodney's eyes were shut tight, face screwed up with pain, and John murmured into his ear, "Easy, yeah—can you move your toes? Okay—it's okay, Rodney, you're going to be fine. No blood, it's probably just a simple fracture, not compound. You'll be walking on it in a month."
"That's great," Rodney said, "considering I'm going to be dead in a day—oh god, the avalanche, we're—Ronon, Teyla, all of us, we're buried alive, we—"
"Ronon and Teyla are fine. We made it out, we got your LSD, and now we got you," John told him, not sympathetically but not unkind. "So shut up and calm down."
"I can't calm down, I'm claustrophobic, I can't just not be claustrophobic, especially when I've been buried alive—"
"Wide open spaces," John told him, "blue skies, green fields—"
"White snow, which has buried—"
"Work with me, Rodney," John said. "White clouds, high in the sky," calm and steady, sounding like he always did; or always did with Rodney, at least, the particular wry contentment that John managed with him as no one else could, as if everyone else's exasperation with Dr. McKay was so much that it drained the well and left him with only amusement.
His voice sounded as he always did, but he turned his face toward Rodney's as he spoke, until his lips brushed the lobe of Rodney's ear, and Rodney turned his cheek, too, into that caress, pained countenance relaxing. Like this closeness wasn't awkward but familiar, like he had lain like this before. John's arms wrapped comfortably around him, John's body fit against his, for shared body-heat, but also as if it belonged there. As if they belonged like this, together under the parka, and they both understood it, had been aware of it for some time.
Had they been Athosian, they would sleep like this every night through the winter. It would have meant nothing, save that it was cold and they were close; nothing Teyla hadn't already known. But they were not Athosian; she had had five years to understand this, and to know the meaning of what she saw.
Crouched beside her, Ronon had gone stiller than a chreth-cat stalking; he, too, had been with these men from Earth long enough to understand.
In the space under the snow below them, Rodney's eyes were still closed. But John turned his head, looked up and at them, and when their eyes met Teyla could see his secrets in them, torn open and revealed, exposed, and he raw and hurting underneath.
At John's order, Ronon cut a pair of straight branches with his knife and tossed them down into their snowy hideaway. Rodney nearly passed out again when John tightened the splint around his leg; his cheeks, already more white than red from the cold, lost their last bit of color, and he bit down on the seam of his glove hard enough to leave tooth-marks. But his eyes stayed open, if squinted and red-rimmed; the moisture freezing at their corners could be attributed to the grit of frost, and John patted his shoulder, told him, "Doing good, McKay."
Rodney nodded, the motion quick and curt with barely suppressed pain, took the glove out of his mouth and asked, "Does that mean we're getting out of here now?"
"Working on it," John said; or rather, Ronon and Teyla were working on it. They were no longer visible through the narrow gap to the surface, but he could hear the shuffling of snow moving overhead, erratic creaks and hisses as ice flakes sifted down. If Ronon or Teyla made a wrong move, he and Rodney would both be buried, under enough snow to suffocate them before they could be dug out—but his team knew what they were doing.
Still, if he could get back up there, help move this along—John eyed the walls of the snow pocket, evaluating. Only two meters to climb, though the snow wasn't solid, and if he fell on Rodney trying to make it...
"Any idea how much longer?" Rodney asked. "Because I don't mean to complain—"
John rolled his eyes. "Rodney, you always mean to complain—"
"—but it's pretty damn cold here."
"Not compared to some places," John said. "What about that Eskimo-type village on M5Q-717? Hell, you were in Antarctica for months, this is nothing." But Rodney's teeth were clacking, even with his arms crossed under his parka and his head sunk into the furry collar. John crawled up alongside him again, carefully avoiding his broken leg. He settled back into the snow, on top of the thermal survival blanket he'd spread out, and unzipped his parka again to pull Rodney close.
John felt like a popsicle himself by now, but Rodney felt cold even to his chilled touch—the shock of the injury on top of impending hypothermia; they had to get him out of here soon. He was shivering as he burrowed into John's side, but he tucked his chin into the warmth of John's neck with the pleased little hum that had become so familiar lately, and John felt his cold cheeks curve into a smile in spite of himself.
"Better?" he asked.
"Better," Rodney agreed, but his contentment was too sleepy to be healthy, in this cold.
John snaked his arms around Rodney's back, chafing gently to get his blood moving. Into his radio he asked, "Hey, guys, how's it coming?"
"We hopefully will be able to get to you soon, John," Teyla answered, a little out of breath.
A shadow appeared in the hole above them, Ronon's dreadlocked head blocking the sunlight. "Still just lying around?" he asked.
Rodney didn't look up, but he raised his voice to reply, "Oh, yes, because we've got a lot of options, buried alive down here."
"You want anything to get even more comfortable? Pillows? A DVD? Condoms?"
John almost choked, but Rodney just said, "Hot cocoa would hit the spot."
"Don't got any," Ronon said, with altogether too much satisfaction.
Rodney lifted his head, squinted up at Ronon. "You know we'd trade places with you in a flat second," he said.
"Yeah," Ronon said, dropping the mocking to match Rodney's tone. "But I'd hate being stuck down there, too."
Teyla's silhouette joined Ronon's over them. "I believe we almost have enough space cleared," she said. "If we can lift Rodney out..."
"Great," Rodney said, and through his chattering teeth it didn't sound anything but wholeheartedly sincere.
John brought his left arm out from under the parka to check his watch. Atlantis should be dialing in within the next fifteen minutes for the scheduled check-in. A jumper wouldn't be able to land safely on the mountain, but if they could make it out of this hole, further downhill was an area wide enough for a hovering pick-up.
"Okay," John said, sitting up and twisting in the tight confines to struggle out of his parka, kneeling almost on top of Rodney to manage it. "We'll use the coat as a sling to pull you up." He worked his arm out of one sleeve, yanked off the other as Rodney watched, blinking slow and befuddled.
"Hey, buddy," John said, touching Rodney's cheek with his gloved fingers. "I know you're cold, but stay with me, here."
Rodney shook his head. "Right," he said. "Sorry, yes, what're we doing?"
"Putting you on the parka," John told him. "Pick yourself up on your arms, I'll slide it under. And try not to move your leg, unless you've got a new kink for excruciating pain."
Rodney didn't even snort at that, just nodded and took a deep breath before bracing his hands in the snow and levering his butt off the ground. John moved fast to shove the parka under him, and Rodney collapsed back on it, flopping down gasping, his eyes glazed with pain.
He gripped John's hand tight enough to cut off circulation, panted, "For the love of god, tell me we have something stronger than Tylenol."
"We do, but you can't have it," John said. The med-kit in Teyla's intact pack would have morphine ampules, but with Rodney already in stage one hypothermia they couldn't risk it.
Rodney gave him a narrow-eyed glare. "Bastard."
"Make it up to you later," John promised, squeezing Rodney's hand back.
"With a week's supply of the good drugs?" Rodney demanded, then coughed and added awkwardly, "Or, um, did you have something else in mind?" in a particular tone that John knew meant his ears would be turning red, if they weren't frostbitten and hidden under his orange hat besides.
If they'd been back in their quarters on Atlantis, John might have flashed him the smirk that never failed to make Rodney's eyes go wide, might have ducked to touch his cold nose to Rodney's cheek and make him yelp.
But they were off-world on a failed mission, under five feet of snow and with Ronon and Teyla working above them, maybe listening, and John looked away, rather than meet Rodney's teasing, tempting gaze.
"Teyla, Ronon, you guys almost ready?" he called up, not bothering with the radio, as he gathered the parka's sleeves and tied them together across Rodney's middle.
"Almost," Teyla said, as a shower of snow fell on them from above. After John brushed it off, he saw Teyla through the widened hole, waving at them.
She dropped down a length of climbing rope, and Rodney helped John thread it through the parka's tied sleeves to fashion their makeshift sling. Rodney's fingers were clumsier than John's, and his eyes kept losing focus in a way that made John wonder about a concussion, but that could wait until they were off this damn mountainside and safe in Atlantis's infirmary.
He wasn't prepared for Rodney to grab his arm, lost his balance and almost planted an elbow in Rodney's stomach when he was yanked close, Rodney's nose practically in his ear.
"John," Rodney whispered; his breath was still warm, at least, tickling his earlobe, and John almost pulled away, almost snapped this wasn't the damn time, but Rodney said, "They saw, didn't they—did they see?"
John twisted his head around to look at Rodney head-on. Rodney's gaze darted up toward the hole where Teyla and Ronon were working, then back to John's. "Did they?"
John shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe."
Rodney's eyes were round and stark blue in his too-pale face. "I'm sorry, really, I didn't—"
"It wasn't your fault," John told him. "You were freezing and out of it, and I had to warm you up," and maybe he could just pass it off as first aid.
If it had been Lorne or some of the Marines, maybe. But Teyla and Ronon were their team, and they'd seen; they'd seen them, he'd seen it in their faces, for that one moment, though they hadn't said anything.
That, too, could wait until they were back on Atlantis. John didn't let himself think about it now, concentrating on getting Rodney out of this hole. He gave support from below while Ronon and Teyla pulled him up, Rodney with his eyes shut tight and his mouth shut tighter, though a couple whimpers still escaped when a chunk of ice gave way and almost dumped him off the sling.
After they got him up, Ronon dropped the rope down again and hauled John up. He blinked in the sun, bright and blinding on the snow, and rubbed his arms. Out of the snow's shelter, the breeze over the mountain was brisk without his parka.
"Here," and Ronon handed over his coat, tac vest, and P-90. John got them on quickly, then trudged over to Rodney, sitting propped against a snowbank with Teyla beside him. "How you doing?"
Rodney stopped his teeth chattering with effort, jaw tight. "D-depends on the scale. Seen better, freezing, agonizing—take your pick."
"Glad to hear it," John said, patting his shoulder. The exertion had put a little color back in his face, at least. "Atlantis should be dialing in any minute now, and we'll ask for a lift—"
"John," Teyla said suddenly, head coming up like a pointer orienting, her eyes fixed on a distant, invisible point in the cloudless blue sky.
John knew that faraway look; didn't want to recognize it, but he did, even before he registered Ronon looming over them with his blaster drawn. He was already reaching for his P-90 as Teyla said, "Wraith have come."
It had been some time since Teyla had encountered Wraith unexpectedly, when she was not braced for it; it took a moment now to adjust to the ache of their sudden presence, a coldness in her core more bitter than the freezing mountain climate. She closed her eyes to gather herself, took a breath that shocked her lungs, but the icy air was clear, cleansing.
She felt a hand on her arm—John's, when she opened her eyes, leaning close to look searchingly at her face. "I am all right," she assured him, nodding, and he nodded back, but continued to frown.
Rodney was speaking; she tuned in to the words within his nervous babble—"—if the Wraith are here, it can't be coincidence, the avalanche must've also set off a beacon, same as in Michael's other labs. Damn it, I should have thought of that right away, it's—"
"Michael is dead," Teyla said, and stating that flat truth steadied her.
"Yes, I know he's dead," Rodney said, "but he had all those disciples cum mercenaries for hire, and they probably sold his work to the highest bidder, which might've been a Wraith—"
"Wraith don't buy stuff," Ronon said.
"Then a Wraith worshipper, whatever—some hive must have gotten hold of his subspace alert's frequency."
"And followed it here when we set it off," John said, eyes narrowed.
Ronon tipped back his head to scan the sky. "We got to get under cover," he said, crouching by Rodney.
"Wait, my leg's been moved enough—" Rodney tried to fend him off.
"Don't have a choice," John said. "Unless you want to get scooped up in a dart."
"We don't know that they'll have sent darts—"
"They will have," Ronon said, picking up Rodney swiftly, but with care. Their teammate squeaked when his injured leg was moved, gripping Ronon's arms tight, but he didn't protest, as Ronon bore him to the cover of trees alongside the former path. Teyla and John followed, none too soon; they were scarcely under the pine boughs when she heard the tooth-jarring whine of the Wraith ships. Two darts soared overhead, then circled around the mountain's peak and returned to hover in the air, only a bit further up the slope from where they were hidden.
"Triangulating," John said, watching the two crafts maneuver. "They must not know exactly where the beacon is."
"Don't know where the lab is," Rodney suggested. He was pallid and breathless where Ronon had set him down in the snow, leaning against a tree trunk, but his brow under his hat was furrowed in thought. "They must've gotten the beacon's frequency, but not a map. Hell, they might not even know what they're looking for."
"Us," Ronon said grimly.
"Or Michael's lab," Rodney countered. "Maybe they never found the way in and came hoping someone else had."
John checked his watch. "Atlantis should've dialed in by now," he said.
"The Wraith may be keeping the gate active," Teyla suggested.
"Makes sense," Rodney agreed, eyes wide and worried. "If they know someone else is here, they'd want to keep them from bringing in backup."
"Yeah, backup would be good," John said. He pulled down a snowy bough again to peer out at the two darts, then looked back at the three of them. "Teyla, can you tell if there are more of them coming?"
Teyla frowned, reluctantly forcing herself to more closely examine the ugly pressure of the Wraith minds, pounding in her temples and turning her stomach. "There are more on this world," she said. "Not as many as on a hive or cruiser, but more than the pilots of the darts."
"Any idea how many?"
She would have rather put her bare hand into a pile of rotting meat, but she reached inside herself again, tried to sort out the throbbing presences. It was like trying to count individual bruises after one has fallen down a flight of stairs, and after a moment she shook her head, let go her held breath. "I'm sorry, John. There are more, but mostly drones, and I cannot distinguish one from another. But I believe some of them may be climbing the mountain."
"Coming here." John worried at his lip with his teeth for a moment. "Okay, we need to get back to the gate and get through to Atlantis."
Rodney swallowed. "This mountain, with my leg I don't think—"
John didn't hesitate, that she could tell; no more than he ever did, when coming to a decision. "Me and Ronon will go down to the gate, figure out how to get help," he said. "Teyla, you stay with Rodney. Make sure he doesn't break the other one. And don't break it for him, no matter how tempting it gets."
"Hey!" Rodney squawked.
Teyla nodded smoothly. "Understood."
"Wait!" Rodney worked to sit up straight, his breath catching as he set his back against the tree. "You don't—Teyla should go with you two. If there's a lot of Wraith at the gate—might need all of you to take them out. I've got a gun, I can take care of myself—"
"If a whole squadron's looking for you?" Ronon asked skeptically.
"Well, um..." Rodney looked down at his sidearm. "If I, uh, have some extra clips..."
"You can't walk," John said. "You'll need Teyla's help to turn off the beacon, once you figure it out."
"Once I—how am I supposed to do that? Wave my magic wand? In case you missed it, my laptop's under an avalanche—"
John opened Teyla's pack, took out the small computer that had recently been added to their standard inventory. He handed it down to Rodney, along with the life-signs detector. "Here. Get figuring." He stood, having to hunch under the low branches, looked to Teyla. "Make sure you both stay on the radios," he told her, then turned to Ronon. "Let's go."
"Good luck," Teyla told them.
"Yeah," John said, looking from her to Rodney and back again. "Stay safe." He meant "Stay alive," but there was no need for him to clarify; they both understood.
"You, too," Rodney replied, gloved fingers tapping a nervous tattoo on the computer's silver case.
John didn't answer, just met his eyes once more and then turned aside, pushed through the pine boughs and headed downhill. Ronon followed him, and they were soon lost among the patchwork white and dark of the snowy woods.
"I'm sure they'll be. Um. Fine," Rodney said behind her.
Teyla looked back at him, huddled against the tree trunk, clutching the computer to his chest the way Torren would cling to his favorite soft toy. He was shivering, and she was feeling the cold herself, as the adrenaline spike of the Wraith's arrival waned.
Rodney looked even more miserable now than he had trapped under the snow with John. Aloud, Teyla told him, "I am sure they will be." And Rodney's slanted half-smile thanked her for the effort, for all he didn't believe her anymore than she did herself.
Even off the path, John probably could have found his way back to the Stargate; it wasn't that difficult to tell up the mountain from down. But he was perfectly okay with letting Ronon take the lead; not only was he an expert trail-blazer in any climate, but Ronon would see, or hear, or smell the Wraith coming before John had a clue. Hopefully before the Wraith had a clue, either.
Not knowing if the darts might circle back and spot them, they stuck to the woods, even when they reached the end of the avalanche's debris and the trail was clear. Going downhill was more tiring than going up; John concentrated on planting his feet solidly in the snow without slipping, and catching convenient branches when he failed. Ronon, of course, always knew where to step, and his boots scarcely made a sound, never crunching on an unexpected crust of ice. John tried to match his footsteps, but it was tricky; Ronon's legs were too damn long.
With his hat pulled over his ears, the woods were mute, save for the rhythm of his own breathing in his head. Even the wind rustling the evergreen boughs was muffled by the snow. John started when that quiet was broken, and by Ronon's voice, no less. Ronon never spoke first. But he said now, "You think McKay'll get them into the lab?"
"It was the mission," John said. "If he doesn't, we'll only have to try again later, and it's not going to get any warmer here, from what Rodney said."
Ronon didn't look back, head lowered and eyes on the ground, picking his swift way downhill. "Be bad if Wraith get hold of Michael's stuff."
"Yeah," John said.
"Should've gotten rid of it before," Ronon said.
When they'd heard the rumors that Michael had another lab on a deserted world, Ronon had suggested flying in with a jumper and dropping a few hundred kilos of C-4 on the mountain. Michael's research might be useful, but making sure all his experiments were permanently ended was better. John hadn't been able to fault his logic, but Woolsey had disagreed.
"We might've triggered a self-destruct in the lab along with the avalanche," John suggested. Michael had wired some of his places that way. "Or Rodney might be able to break in before the Wraith do. With luck he'll turn the beacon off, anyway."
"He's hurt," Ronon said.
"You know McKay, he works best under pressure. And he doesn't need his leg to use a computer. Besides, Teyla's got his back, and she'll keep him on mission."
"Distracted," Ronon said. He might have been suggesting that Rodney would be too distracted to protect himself from any Wraith, but that was what Teyla was there for. Ronon knew as well as John that Rodney needed distracting sometimes, needed to keep busy or else he'd lose it, trapped helpless and hurt and half-frozen on a mountainside, with Wraith darts overhead.
John had wanted Ronon along with him in part because there was no way that Ronon would've been able to sit tight and wait for rescue; he would have had to do something, attack the Wraith somehow. Better that the something be potentially productive rather than suicidal. And Rodney, for all he was Ronon's polar opposite in most things, was exactly the same in that; waiting patiently was not his strong suit. Something for him to do, anything, even futile, was better than nothing.
Ronon got that, and got, too, that John got it. And there was nothing special about that, nothing that hadn't been true for years now; they all knew each other this well. Yet it felt to John like Ronon was watching him now. Ronon always did seem to have eyes on the back of his dreads, and even as he blazed their trail now, John could feel that invisible attention fixed on him, assessing, judging. Like the look in Ronon's eyes, the look in Teyla's, when they'd been above them, staring down on him and Rodney through the hole in the white snow ceiling.
Or else John was losing his fucking mind. It wasn't like they'd been doing anything. Rodney had been hypothermic and they all knew the basic first aid for exposure. He'd done nothing he wouldn't have done, before or now; nothing any of them wouldn't have done. If Teyla had gone down to take care of Rodney instead of him, or Ronon, it wouldn't have been any different.
Except they hadn't, and John had. Teyla was smaller, she could've fit in the snow pocket better—though she had less body-heat to spare. And Ronon had more, though huddling for warmth wasn't ideal first aid anyway, potentially dangerous to the rescuer; he'd been risking his own case of hypothermia, giving up his heat to Rodney.
Ronon had dragged him out of the snow, bruised and sore, stunned from the avalanche's tumbling and sick with panic, because he hadn't been able to see any of them when the snowslide hit. When John had finally blinked through the whiteout of sunlight on snow, there was Ronon's sure solid strength, unbroken; and Teyla, with ice caked in her hair but her steady eyes as warming as sitting by a fire—but Rodney, Rodney was nowhere in sight, and the dread knotted in his chest had hurt like a goddamn coronary, hard to breathe around it.
And that was nothing new, either; nothing he hadn't felt before, the last thousand times things had gone pear-shaped. Before this, before Atlantis: freezing mountainsides or scorching deserts, it was always the same inside, hot anger and cold fear. He was a solider, and he'd learned how to deal, how to tamp it down and carry on and try to save his people. Sometimes he lost, and sometimes he got lucky—this time he got lucky—it hadn't been any different, this time.
Except it had been different. It had been different since he had walked through his first Stargate into another galaxy; it had been different since he'd smiled at a woman on an alien planet and she'd smiled back and invited him to tea, different since he'd helped out a man dangerous enough to survive seven years of Wraith hunts and strong enough not to lose himself in the doing. Different since he'd sat in the wrong chair at the right time and Dr. Rodney McKay had shown up out of the blue to boss him around.
And it was different now, too, had been for going on two months. Rodney had tried to tell him, kept bringing up Ronon and Teyla, kept trying things when it was just the four of them hanging out, clumsy awkward attempts that John had dodged every time, because it was safer this way, easier this way. He'd had sex before, been married before, and why make a big deal about it, when he never had before. Rodney might have, but he wasn't Rodney. This was personal, didn't have anything to do with anybody; it didn't change anything.
And Christ, John, not the time for this. Not on a snowy mountain on another planet, sweating under his parka but with his fingers prickling from the cold through his gloves, numb enough to mess up his handling of the P-90. Wraith behind them, Wraith before them, and toss a coin for which half of his team was in more danger.
John shoved one hand into his warm pockets, keeping the other free to steady himself as he skip-slid down the mountainside. It was steeper here; if it weren't for the trees it would be easier just to sit in the snow and toboggan down on his ass. Even Ronon had slowed down, stepping sideways, parallel to the slope. He had still gotten a good twenty-five feet ahead, only partly visible through the trees. Keeping pace with John's ambling; if he'd gone by himself he'd probably be at the bottom of the mountain by now.
Gritting his teeth, John switched pocketed hands to warm up the other one, and picked up the pace, putting all his attention on finding his way through the snow. Ronon's boot had been there, and there—stretch of his legs to make the next step but he did it, and the one after.
The step after that, a fallen branch under the snow gave way, and John slipped, landed hard on his side and kept sliding, plowing up a mini avalanche of his own as he skidded down the slope. He clawed at the ground to stop himself but only got handfuls of loose snow, icy branches slipping out of his grasp as dark tree trunks flashed past him.
He stopped with a whump, thought he'd hit a tree for a second, but it was Ronon. His teammate had crouched against the incline, braced his boot on a tree trunk and stretched out his arm to catch John across the chest, pinning him to the slope. John grabbed Ronon's big arm and held on as he caught his breath, feeling like he'd taken a ride down a world-class roller coaster—not two hundred miles an hour, but close enough from this end, and he and his intact ribs were damn grateful Ronon's arm hadn't been a tree or a rock. "Thanks," he panted.
"Yeah," Ronon said. It was the perfect chance for him to make a crack about John's wilderness skills, or inability to walk, but he didn't take it. Head cocked to listen, he scanned the forest, hushed again, now that the blood roaring in John's ears was fading. Ronon's features were set and reserved; not a fighter's resolve, but the single-minded purpose of a survivalist, his Runner's face.
When John made to stand, Ronon didn't look over, but didn't let go, either, picking John up and setting him on his feet, making sure he was stable on the steep incline. John ached when he straightened up, fresh bruises screaming for attention, competing with the avalanche's previous knocking. But there were no pangs too sharp to be ignored, nothing broken or seriously sprained for all the protests of his back and knees.
"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered, and Ronon did finally look at him at that, the focused distance in his eyes lessening as he smirked.
"Thought you liked skiing," he said.
"I love skiing," John said. "With ski poles. And skis. And standing, not sledding on my back."
Ronon shrugged. "Same difference; it all gets you downhill."
John looked up the slope, following the long path he had plowed. He'd made good time then but had lost it all now, catching his breath. "Come on, gotta keep moving."
Ronon gave him an ironical look, mutely but clearly pointing out that he wasn't the one holding up their expedition, but resumed the descent. He started beside John and soon got in front, trailblazing again, but now he stayed only a few feet ahead, close enough to grab John if he slipped again.
John could have been pissed for the sake of his pride, but he was cold and sore and Rodney and Teyla were still stuck up the mountainside with a couple Wraith darts for company, and it was easier to follow Ronon's sure footsteps this close behind him. He didn't have time or space for pride.
This close, he could almost hear Ronon's breathing—too loud, in the snow-blanketed quiet; too aware of his teammate's presence, aware of Ronon's awareness of him. Whenever he glanced up from the ground he saw Ronon's back before him, dreads hanging down over his dark coat, a dusting of white frost glittering on everything.
Was Ronon thinking only of survival, thinking with his Runner's mind, his attention on nothing but the Wraith out here on the mountain with them? Or was he holding other thoughts unvoiced, as usual, because Ronon never said anything unless he had to, and with John he rarely did; John rarely asked that of him, rarely wanted to.
But Ronon had spoken first before, a few minutes ago; he'd brought up McKay.
"Ronon," John said.
He wasn't sure he'd wanted to say it aloud, or if he even had, until Ronon replied, "Yeah?"
John kept his eyes on the ground, focused on stepping where Ronon had stepped, and not falling. "About me. And Rodney. It's—there's—"
"Yeah," Ronon said again.
John exhaled; he wasn't sure if it was a sigh of relief, or the whoosh of breath when you've been socked in the gut. "So you know..."
"Guessed," Ronon said. "Didn't know. Now I do."
Ronon didn't look back, and his face might be hard to read, but his voice was harder, especially with its bass resonance stifled by the snow. John took a couple of fast steps out from Ronon's path and skidded a few feet down the slope, enough to look sidelong at Ronon's profile as they walked.
"Are you—" he started to say, but Ronon snapped up his gloved hand.
He didn't need to say Wraith; it showed in the flash of his eyes, in the rigid curve of his spine as he crouched in an iced-over thicket and reached for his blaster. John hunkered down, too, taking cover behind a squat hemlock and gripping his P-90 as he peered toward the trail they had been following alongside.
He saw nothing, and turned his head toward Ronon. "Where?" he mouthed across the space between them, and Ronon jerked his head down the slope.
John listened hard and made out the stomping of boots on snow—a lot of boots, to echo like that. Ten of them came around the trail's bend, eight drone soldiers with their faceless masks, escorting two tall, white-haired Wraith males in the usual black leather, no neon tuques or furs to complement their fetishist wardrobe.
They weren't taking any chances, with those numbers; they wanted whatever was here. Whether or not they knew what it was.
Ronon was whipcord tense, concealed in the thicket and inching forward. His blaster was in his fist, and the edge of his teeth were bared, but he glanced back at John, tilted his head in a question.
John shook his own head in a sharp negative. Four or five they might be able to handle, but ten was too risky. They could get killed or captured; worse, if the Wraith knew for certain somebody was here, they'd be expecting more, might search for more, and if they found Teyla and Rodney...
The Wraith were wary, taking their time to study both the ground and the forest as they marched; but John and Ronon were safely out of their line of sight, and their tracks on the descent didn't intersect the trail. All the tracks they had left in the snow on the way up were easily followed, however...
As soon as the Wraith had passed, John tapped his radio. "Teyla, Rodney, you read me?"
"Yes, John?" Teyla answered, reassuringly quickly.
"You guys are going to have company," John said, and explained.
"Do we have to?" Rodney asked. The whine in his voice was ordinary enough, but there was a quaver to it that was not, a tired, pained pleading that sapped at Teyla's irritation, softened her tone.
"If you wish to get captured by Wraith tracking our footprints, then no, we don't have to. Otherwise, yes, we have to move. The Wraith John told us of will be here within an hour, even if they are traveling slow. It will be safer deeper in the forest."
She had tossed snow and branches onto the avalanche's fill to conceal some of their trail, but she didn't dare venture too far into the open for fear of the darts spotting her. The ships were making zigzagging circuits in the sky, still zeroing in on Michael's beacon, presumably.
"Exactly how long do we have?" Rodney asked. "Because if we can wait a few minutes, I'll have a better destination than simply deeper into the freezing, dark woods."
Teyla turned to him. "You have found the beacon's location?"
Since Ronon and John had headed down the mountain, Rodney had been busy with the computer. He had plugged it into the life-signs detector with a spare cord not lost with his laptop in the avalanche, and been studying the readouts diligently, making thoughtful noises, in between muttered complaints about the nuisance of typing with gloves, and whimpered "Ow"s whenever he accidentally moved more than an inch.
Teyla had helped him set up the laptop on a snowbank such that he could reach it without budging his leg; she otherwise didn't disturb him, being busy herself covering their trail and watching the darts. Truthfully she had not been expecting Rodney to succeed. John had assigned the task to occupy him, to keep him from dwelling on their situation to the point of despair, as much as any goal of completing their mission. He knew Rodney that well—knew them all that well; and he trusted her skills to keep Rodney safe.
Besides, the beacon would do them little good if it were located underground or on a high peak, or somewhere else inaccessible. But Rodney shook his head now. "The signal's coming from over there," and he waved generally to the east, and up, "but I don't know how far away. That's not what I was looking for, though. So we found the door to Michael's lab, right?"
Teyla nodded. "Before the avalanche."
"Trying to break in triggered the avalanche. One of Michael's traps—I should've seen that coming." Rodney grimaced, guilt showing as obvious on his face as it always did. "I really thought I had the right failsafe."
"You have successfully broken into Michael's labs before," Teyla reassured him.
"Yeah, yeah, but I should've realized this one was set up differently. But putting aside that lapse—I was thinking about how the door got buried. It's summer in this hemisphere; in winter there'd have been even more snow. So even if the beacon summoned Michael—if he were still alive to summon—he'd need a lot of shovels to get in. Totally impractical. Unless," and Rodney's voice rose with the excitement of revelation, washing away his fatigue, "he had another way."
"Another entrance to the lab," Teyla realized.
"A backdoor, yes. I've been tracing potential energy signals, looking for standby power leakage from electrical equipment in the vicinity. And I've got something."
He picked up the life-signs detector, adjusted it. Teyla leaned over his shoulder to peek at the computer screen, but he was dealing with the raw data and she didn't have any references to understand the columns of changing numbers. "Where?" she asked, mustering patience with effort.
"Just a second—yes! Here..." Rodney started to hunch over the laptop, then jerked his spine straight with a wince, and blew out a couple of ragged breaths. "Shit. Remind me not to break a leg again anytime soon, this sucks... Okay, it's thataway," and he pointed in the same general direction as when indicating the beacon.
It was deeper into the woods, at least, further from the approaching Wraith. But it was uphill, and though the incline was shallow, even level ground would be difficult for Rodney to manage. "How far?" she asked.
"Don't know exactly, but to pick up a signal this weak, the source can't be too far. Less than a kilometer."
"All right, then we will go." Teyla folded the computer closed and stowed it in her gear, then took a moment to clear the ground of snow at Rodney's feet, so he might stand without slipping. Rodney, for his part, clipped the detector to his parka, then shut his eyes and gathered himself with a few deep inhalations.
He helped push himself up on the tree behind him while she pulled him to his feet, but once vertical she had to take most of his weight. Rodney slumped against her, gasping unevenly, faint short sounds like sobs. "S-sorry," he got out finally. "Hurts like a—like a—it fucking hurts."
"So I remember," Teyla said, keeping her voice light. "When I was ten I fell from a tree and broke my leg, such that the bone showed through the skin. Later, my father let me sip unwatered Ruus wine for the first time, but still, it is not a pleasant memory."
"Doesn't sound it, no." Rodney whimpered as they took their first step, but he swallowed it, stammered out, "B-broke my arm, when I was twelve. This other kid—bully—dared me to skateboard. He was a Michael, too, actually, Mikey Fitzgerald. Imbecilic soccer player, I despised him. He was a year older, three grades behind me, and he had a mustache, at—ow!—at thirteen. So I tried his stupid skateboard and I broke my arm and it hurt like a son of a bitch, but at least I didn't have to walk on it. —God!"
Teyla's boot had landed on an icy patch and she nearly slipped, jarring Rodney. "I am sorry," she apologized immediately, and Rodney nodded, ducking his head jerkily. His eyes were squeezed shut and the lines around his mouth were drawn tight, ashen as the snow.
"I imagine," she said, as they resumed their painfully slow ascent, "that both Ronon and John have hurt themselves more times, and worse, than either of us. Ronon broke three different bones when he was Running, that he has told me. And John has never mentioned, but if I am to speculate from his recent medical history, I should think his childhood must have been fraught with injury."
"Actually John only went to the hospital once as a kid," Rodney said. "For a bad stomach flu. He never broke anything."
"Truly?" Teyla asked, skeptically.
"Strong bones, he says, runs in his family. Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but he swears that all the roofs he jumped off of never did any permanent damage."
"You and John talk about much together," Teyla said.
She spoke carefully, keeping her tone casual, but Rodney's back stiffened in a manner different from his involuntary twitching with each step they took.
"Yeah, we do," he said after a few more steps, just as carefully. "And maybe more, lately. The last couple months."
"Since you broke up with Dr. Keller."
"Not right away," Rodney protested. "A couple months after that. That's—it wasn't about that. It's not. Really."
"I did not mean that it was, Rodney," Teyla told him. With him leaning so heavily against her, she could feel him shivering, with cold and pain, and emotion too, perhaps. It was enough to make her shiver herself in sympathetic resonance. She tightened her arms around him, shifting slightly so it was a little more like an embrace, to let him know her hold was strong, that he did not have to take any more effort to support himself than he could spare.
"I didn't want to come—to tell people—the one thing about keeping this secret is that I haven't had to tell Jennifer," Rodney babbled. "Because I'm—I don't want her to think that I—it wasn't like that, it's not about that. But I'm not sure she'd buy it. I don't think I would, if she started dating you or Amelia Banks or whoever. Um, not that you would, you've got Kanaan; but in theory, um, yeah. It'd be. It is...weird. Isn't it."
"I could not say," Teyla said.
"I think it's weird," Rodney said, "and I'm the one in it, so, um, I can only imagine what it—what it looks like, to—um—I can't—I need to—"
Teyla wasn't prepared for Rodney to sway; she stumbled when he did, and his splinted leg bumped on the uneven ground. Rodney made a strangled whine and folded; she only just caught him as he collapsed, in time to ease him down. He flopped back in the snow and breathed hard, the same gulping, choked sounds Torren made after his occasional fits of wailing.
Teyla pressed Rodney's nearer hand between her own, to warm and to comfort. When he had recovered himself, she put two more analgesic pills into his shaking hands, and then her canteen, after he gulped them dry without bothering with his own water.
"Sorry," he said, his voice shaky. "Thought I was going to black out. P-pushed too hard."
"You did well," Teyla told him, not entirely honestly. She had hoped to make it further, and faster. Leaving him to rest under the umbrella of a spruce tree's low branches, she circled back to conceal their tracks. It did not take long; the snow under the trees wasn't fresh, but patchy and already marked by animals and thaws. Only an expert could follow their trail, once she had brushed away the obvious prints.
When she returned to Rodney, he was checking the life-signs detector. "The good news is, we're going in the right direction," he said, sounding stronger, but still unsteady. "And it's pretty close. Bad news—I can't make it."
"Rodney—"
In the tree's shade, his face was bluish and his eyes pallid. "I'm not being melodramatic, I'm being reasonable. I don't have the pain tolerance for this; if I keep going I'll pass out and you'll have to drag me, and then the Wraith will have no trouble tracking either of us. So it makes more sense for you to go on ahead, find the way in, while I wait here. Conscious, with my gun, so if the Wraith show up, I'm ready for them. And you'll be close enough to come to the rescue. Hopefully."
Teyla considered this, then reluctantly nodded. "All right."
"Please, listen to me, this is the—um. Oh." Rodney looked momentarily nonplussed. "That easy?"
John, she thought, would not have decided so easily—but she was not leaving Rodney behind; she was looking for the way to save both of them. "It does make sense." She took out the computer, set it out for him on the snow, and handed him her last PowerBar as well. "But you are to keep watch with the life-signs detector, and you must not sleep."
"I'd rather avoid slipping into hypothermia myself," Rodney said. "Or getting eaten by a Wraith, that'd be worse. So yes, trust me, I'm not planning to nap anytime soon."
"Then I will go now, quickly," Teyla said, pushing aside the tree's boughs.
"Teyla." Rodney's tone made her pause, look back at him. He had put the life-signs detector down in his lap and was wringing his hands over it, or else rubbing warmth into his cold fingers. "I'm—sorry," he said, in the abrupt, forced manner of his rare true apologies, different from the reflexive, casually meaningless "Sorry" that John attributed to his Canadian heritage.
"Perhaps later would be better," Teyla said.
Rodney might have flushed; in the shade and cold it was hard to tell. "It's just—if I were Ronon," he said, "or you, or Sheppard, I know I'd push on, keep going. Overcome the pain with sheer willpower. But my brain doesn't work like that. So—I'm sorry."
"Our strengths are different, Rodney," Teyla told him gently. "You owe me no apology for that."
Rodney squared his jaw. "For other stuff, maybe, though?" he asked, with more direct courage than she would have credited him for.
"Maybe," she said, but this was not the right moment for that. "That direction?" she asked, pointing.
Rodney checked the detector. "Yes. And up."
"The slope climbs," Teyla said, looking up it. "How will I know when I've arrived?"
Rodney winced, perhaps because of his leg, or perhaps not. "No idea. If we're lucky, there's another door. If not..."
"I will figure it out."
"Right. Well. Good luck?"
"For all of us," Teyla said.
The Stargate was in a valley between the mountain peaks. The clearing surrounding it in the otherwise dense forest was one of the few signs that people visited this world—that Michael had visited this world, anyway.
The sun was well past its zenith by the time John and Ronon reached the clearing, though it was hours yet until nightfall; this time of year the days were long, according to Rodney. Still, it had lowered enough to cast long shadows on the snow, stretching out like blue fingers from the Wraith drones standing guard around the DHD.
There were only four of them. But overheard were two more Wraith darts—unless the pair from the mountaintop had circled back. Either way, it was a problem. "These guys aren't kidding around," John said, eying the crafts from their cover of frost-rimed underbrush. They could shoot the guards on the ground, but the darts would scoop them up if they got near the DHD.
The gate was active, rippling blue glow playing across the snow, making it shimmer like water. As John and Ronon watched, the wormhole winked out, and one of the Wraith immediately punched in an address, opening it again, though none of them went through it. Holding the line, so no one else could dial in. Standard protocol was for Atlantis to try every ten minutes if the gate got a busy signal, but the Wraith weren't leaving it down for more than a few seconds; the odds of Atlantis getting through were low.
Woolsey would know something was wrong by now, when there wasn't supposed to be anyone else on this planet to dial out. But sitting and waiting two days for the Daedalus to come check on them wasn't an option.
"We need to take out the darts," John muttered to Ronon, watching the needle-headed shapes hovering under the cloudless blue sky.
"Shoot 'em down?" Ronon suggested.
"Can your blaster do it?"
"Don't know for sure." Ronon's sharp-toothed grin said he'd be up for finding out.
"Maybe later," John said, thinking. "If we had more C-4..."
"How'd we get it up to them?"
"Fake a diversion, get them to land? Though I don't know if we have a big enough bang for both of them..."
"If we got them to land," Ronon said, "we could knock a tree over onto 'em. This one's big enough," and he rapped his knuckles against the wide, wrinkled trunk of a lofty pine.
"How do we cut down a tree?"
"With C-4."
"Hmm. Plan B," John decided.
"What's A?"
"Right here," John said, and tapped his radio. "Hey, Rodney, you there? Have any bright ideas about how Ronon and I can take down a couple darts?"
"—Give me a few minutes," Rodney told John and Ronon over the radio, as Teyla listened. "Anyway, it'll be better to try anything at the end of the thirty-eight minute window, when the gate's sure to close. Just promise me you two idiots won't play lumberjack with C-4."
"Scout's honor," John replied. "I'll trust Canadian know-how when it comes to lumberjacking."
"I don't even own a flannel shirt, you know," Rodney said, huffily and nonsensically, but he sounded better than he had when he'd first answered the radio. He had told her he would not fall asleep, but exposure and the fatigue of pain would not be making that easy, Teyla knew. And John had realized it, she thought; his tone had changed when Rodney had responded, becoming lighter, needling him to spur retorts, getting his blood and brain moving again.
It was how he usually handled their teammate, when Rodney was under strain: providing another target for his anxiety, stressing him out to paradoxically relax him in the doing. John sounded as he always did, sharp, but with that certain unshakable affection that after this long even Rodney had learned to hear, for all his usual deafness to such things.
Teyla listened, but could hear no difference in what John said to Rodney, in what Rodney answered. It didn't surprise her—a couple months, Rodney had said, and that had not surprised her, either, though she couldn't say why. She had learned something new today, was still learning; yet she did not feel ignorant or foolish, the way she sometimes did when Rodney showed her new technology. Then she might make guesses that were wrong, and be embarrassed when he corrected her (looking surprised, as if he couldn't imagine how anyone could possibly make such a stupid mistake.)
In this, however, she would not make many mistaken guesses; she would not often be wrong. It didn't surprise her that she hadn't realized before this, that she had not considered the question; but it didn't surprise her either, that even knowing, she could hear no differences in their voices now.
"Whoops," John said. "Wraith are on patrol, we have to relocate. Radio silence until we're back on."
"Be careful, John, Ronon," Teyla said quickly.
"Right," Ronon said, with a bit too much irony for her tastes, and they signed off with a hiss of static.
"Teyla?" Rodney sounded nervous.
"I am here."
"Yeah, you are," Rodney said. "I'm tracking you on the LSD, you should be right there. What do you see?"
Teyla stopped walking to look around. She had reached a ridge; the ground was more level here, and the trees had thinned out, those remaining bent and beaten by the wind. But there was no door like the imposing metal ones built into the mountainside; there was nothing.
"Look harder," Rodney said, when she told him so. "There's got to be something."
"These energy readings," Teyla asked, "can you make out their shape?"
"What shape, that's ridiculous, it'd be like trying to paint a beach by listening to the surf—hmm. Actually...give me a second..."
She gave him a hundred, counting them off, before she touched her radio again. "Rodney, what do you have?"
"Almost, hold your—okay, got it. I've adjusted the LSD to differentiate between electromagnetic field resonance through various—well, long story; the short one is I'm a genius. It's not as accurate as true radar but it'll do, I'm building a crude image of where you are..."
"Yes?" she prompted.
"And you're right on top of it. Literally—it goes into the ground directly beneath you. It's big, you should be seeing something. Are you sure—"
"I am," Teyla said. "There is nothing here."
"There is, you just can't see it."
"Then it does not help us." Teyla turned a slow circle, scanning the ground, the muddy snow, the stunted trees. Then she frowned. It might only be her imagination, but... "Can you describe to me the precise dimensions of what you see?"
"Sure. From where you're standing, it's a meter and a half directly east, extending in a straight line for three meters—" He read off the directions, and she paced them in the snow, then stepped back.
While she was walking the outline, it seemed only a strange zigzag path; looking at it complete, she recognized its shape. "Rodney, I do not believe I can enter through this door. I am the wrong form."
"You?" Rodney sounded puzzled. "But you're closer to Michael's form than just about anything else, what with your Wraith DNA—um, sorry, Teyla, that maybe was a little inappropriate—"
"It was, but that isn't what I meant," Teyla said. "Rodney, you said that once the avalanche was triggered, Michael would not have been able to enter his lab, unless he had this backdoor. But it's a long climb up the mountain from the Stargate. Perhaps, then, Michael found it easier not to enter by that way at all, and instead always used his backdoor."
"Okay," Rodney said, "that makes sense. But he'd still have to hike up—"
"No," Teyla corrected, tracing the outline of the backdoor with her eyes, the space between the trees where it would open. Just large enough and no larger; small enough to be almost unnoticeable, even from the air. "Not if he flew. This door is the bay for a Wraith dart."
"Oh," Rodney said, in the disgruntled tone of having failed to figure something out first, and then, "Oh!" in the opposite tone.
She knew what he was going to say before he spoke. John, for all he wasn't a scientist, might often think along parallel (and frequently incomprehensible) tracks to Rodney; it was rarer for Teyla, but an oddly triumphant feeling when she did, to know her mind might fly as fast and far as his. So she smiled when he said, "I have—"
"—An idea," Teyla completed for him, satisfied.
"So," John whispered into his radio, "Michael usually flew in through the gate." They'd known he used darts, and it did explain why he'd bothered clearing the forest around the Stargate.
"Always flew, most likely," Rodney said. "The trail up the mountain was a trap. Or maybe the path was there all along, but the door was a trap, anyway; any attempt to enter would set off the avalanche. The sneaky bastard."
"He always was," said John.
"But it works in our favor now," Teyla said.
"Yeah." He'd heard the plan. It wasn't their worst, but that wasn't saying much. "You guys are sure—"
"We are," Teyla said, with that particular patience so flawless that to John it always sounded one step away from homicidal mania. Not that he would ever admit it to Teyla. "As long as you are certain you can deal with the Wraith around the Stargate."
"Four Wraith," Ronon said. He had his blaster in hand; he hadn't holstered it since they had reached the gate's clearing. "No problem."
"Then it is decided," Teyla said.
"Right," John said. "We'll get into position; report in when the Wraith show up there."
"Understood."
John waited a moment, then asked, "McKay?"
"Yes," Rodney replied, "That is, understood—obviously, since it's my plan. Mine and Teyla's, I mean. And not that I have anything to do except try not to get captured by Wraith. But, yes, understood, acknowledged, et cetera."
It was enough words to be reassuring, though John didn't like the brief pause before he had answered, or the rasp in his voice when he had. Winded, like Rodney sounded after hightailing it up twenty flights of stairs, but he hadn't been doing any climbing on that leg. "Rodney, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine," Rodney said shortly, but before John started worrying he elaborated, "Provided one's definition of 'fine' includes sitting under an emergency blanket in sub-zero temperatures with a fractured fibula."
"It's barely below thirty," John informed him.
"Celsius," Rodney retorted.
"Could be worse; could be Kelvin. Hang in there, buddy, this'll be over before you know it."
"Could you maybe sound a little more final?" Rodney snarked. "Don't want to jinx us, after all," and he clicked off.
John switched to a private channel. "Teyla?"
"Yes?"
"How's—" He stopped himself before he asked. Even if Teyla didn't take offense, Ronon, sitting in the underbrush only a few feet away, would hear. And John would never intentionally imply that he didn't trust Teyla, implicitly or explicitly, with his life, with any of their lives. Like he trusted all of them, entirely and completely; it would be betraying them and himself too, if ever they thought he doubted them. "How's it coming, where are you at?"
"I have almost finished planting the charges, according to Rodney's advice," Teyla reported.
"Good."
"John," Teyla said, her voice softening, "Rodney is doing well. He is in pain, but he is not in danger, I don't believe."
"Yeah," John told her. "I know."
"I am watching out for him."
"I know," John said again. "Make sure you watch out for yourself, too."
"Providing you and Ronon attempt to do the same," Teyla said, and switched off before John could call her on the "attempt."
The sun was still shining, and the sky showed blue in the gaps between the branches above, but the forest's shade seemed cooler than when they had arrived. Or maybe it was how the wind had picked up. Teyla zipped her parka up to her neck to block the draft. She had never cared for the cold; even as a child, the summer would have to be sweltering before she would willingly swim in the river's fast, freezing currents. Which never had stopped Kanaan or the other kids from pushing her in, but she would always climb out immediately and exact her vengeance on them.
She had been to worlds far colder, had hiked through deeper snow, and her feet and her nose had been more painfully frozen than this before. All the same, she would rather this moment be back on Atlantis, or with her people, or any of a hundred other places. And the voice in her ear wasn't helping. "—then there were the two idiot researchers who went out for a jog and got lost on the ice. By the time they were rescued, one of them lost four toes to frostbite, but hey, that's how it goes in Antarctica, there's a reason no one ever tried to colonize—"
"Rodney," Teyla said, "I do not see what relevance this story has."
"What are you talking about, it's very relevant to our particular...ah. Um. You mean, what's the point. Yeah, I guess you know wilderness survival better than I do, this is...never mind. Sorry. There are Wraith out there, you should probably be maintaining radio silence, too, along with Ronon and Sheppard. So. Consider your silence maintained, starting now."
He sounded slightly offended, but with Rodney, that could as easily be from guilt as insult. Teyla reminded herself that this was her teammate and friend; that Rodney was colder and more miserable than herself, not even able to move to keep himself warm. For all his words came as fast as ever, he would stutter now and again as his teeth chattered, and his tangential rambling sounded more and more like he did after a sleepless night in the lab, when coffee and adrenaline no longer sufficed and only the noise of his own voice was keeping him awake.
Besides, for all that his talk of Antarctica was cold, colder still was the mountainside when all she could hear was the press of her boots on the snow and the wind through the trees. "Rodney," she said across their private channel, "I do not wish that we quit talking, only that we find a topic less chilling."
"Oh," Rodney said. "That makes sense, yeah. ...Um, what do you want to talk about?"
Of all the questions Rodney so eagerly and impatiently asked, this was not one often heard from him, and Teyla swallowed an impolitic chuckle. "Truthfully, I had not considered. What would interest you? That is warming?"
"Hey, you're the one tramping around the woods," Rodney returned. "Whatever you want. Athosian stuff. Or, I don't know, baby stories. What Torren's doing."
"Nothing except sleep, since you saw him yesterday evening," Teyla said. "At least not that I know of, since I came to prepare for this mission before he awoke."
"Sorry," Rodney said hastily. "I didn't mean—you'll be back to see him soon. We'll stop the Wraith and be off this godforsaken mountain and back on Atlantis, where it's warm—"
"Yes," Teyla said.
"Provided there isn't another unscheduled avalanche, or the Wraith don't bring in more reinforcements, or we're not hit by a blizzard, because the sky looks clear now but without accurate atmospheric readings—um. Sorry. I'm not very good at this. Being warming."
"Perhaps not," Teyla said, though her lips curved in a smile that she felt down into her belly, as good as a sip of mulled Ruus wine.
The pause that followed was not coldly silent; Teyla could almost hear Rodney thinking, like the nearly inaudible whir of a computer's fans. Did his brain warm him, she wondered, as computer circuits heated as they processed? Certainly he thought as quick and clear as any computer—louder, too, Ronon would say...
"Teyla," Rodney said, abrupt, and just as abruptly fell quiet again.
"Yes?"
"Are—um. It's a personal question. Sort of. And I don't want to tick you off. So if you don't want to—"
"I will not be offended. Ask, please."
"I hadn't thought about it before," Rodney said, and the forced casualness of his tone should have warned her, "but were there gay people on Athos? Are there any gay Athosians?"
It was not what she had expected; not what she had been thinking about, deliberately. And she had thought Rodney would be too distracted by the cold and his injury and their circumstances; thought that her own opinion would be such a minor bother to him, amidst all the rest. She had underestimated him.
"Teyla?" Rodney asked, and she was not imagining his apprehension, even with his voice tinny and flattened in the tiny radio speaker.
"I have reached the trail," Teyla replied, because she had; or rather, where the trail had been, before the avalanche.
"The Wraith—"
"Are not yet in sight." As planned, they were still a little ways down the mountain, though she could feel their approach, like a bad taste in her mouth she could not swallow away.
The darts, too, were no longer overhead, down at the Stargate with Ronon and John. Teyla stepped out into the open, tramping an obviously visible path across the piled snow and dirt. Even if the Wraith were not practiced trackers—and few were, save those who hunted Runners; most of them preferred easier prey—they could not fail to miss these footprints.
She made it back to the forest's edge before Rodney dared speak again. "Teyla, I'm—I told you, I didn't want to—sorry, can we forget—"
"You didn't offend me," Teyla told him honestly. "I was considering what you asked; I do not need to forget it."
"Oh." He let her consider for a few more seconds as she pushed into the woods, being sure to break a few branches here and there, and stepping in fresh patches of snow that would clearly mark her footprints. "Um, you know what 'gay' means, right? Not everybody talks about—"
"I know, yes," she said. "And no, there were no gay people on Athos. Or, that is, not as you mean gay. There are no Athosians who would only ever have sex with the same as they are."
"Oh," Rodney said quietly, as she had not often heard him sound, bemused and repentant, as if he could not fix what he had sworn he would. She didn't like hearing him sound so; it was so rare to see him completely fail.
"There are those who like to," Teyla told him. "Some more than others, but many of us have found pleasure in the familiarity of another body like our own, in the joy of understanding that which is always a mystery to men—or to women."
"Many of you?" Rodney asked, almost timidly. "You?...um, too personal, I retract—"
"More than once," Teyla said, smiling a little to think of that hot comfort in this cold place. "With two of my women friends, when I was younger."
"Two—at the same time?"
"On one occasion," Teyla said serenely, shaking her head to imagine the wideness of Rodney's eyes; he would be licking his lips now, she thought.
"That's really hot—um, interesting..."
"Kanaan shared the same, with his friends," Teyla said, breaking a trail through frost-stiffened underbrush, the iced branches crackling as she forced through them. "But now we have Torren. And I should bear two more children, by him or another, and Kanaan must father two more, as Athosians, and those with the Gift beside. Until we have, our bodies should not be dedicated to those pursuits with no chance of fruit."
"Hold on, you're going to have two more kids?" Rodney demanded.
"As a woman of Athos, it is my duty to my people." Teyla hesitated. Even with Kanaan, for all they shared and talked about, it was easier not to ask aloud, to hope that these questions might otherwise be resolved, by circumstance rather than conscious decision. "As a woman of Atlantis...I do not know. Your people's numbers are great already, after so long without the Wraith, and you have other needs...we have other needs. Still, the Gift is valuable, as are other gifts. Your mind, as you have told us before. And John's ATA gene—if Atlantis loses such blood, it would be a great loss."
"I know," Rodney said, so immediately that she knew he had his own questions, unasked and unanswered but not unconsidered. "Believe me, I've thought about it—I wanted it. I proposed to Katie. And then, Jennifer—but it didn't work out. It doesn't work out, and I thought it was impossible, it was me, it was...but the SGC has my sperm; hell, they've got my whole genome, pre- and post-ATA modification. If they decide they need a couple mini-McKays for insurance, and Jeannie's spawn aren't interested, they can always whip up a batch. Maybe mix in Sam's genes for good measure, we'd make one hell of a cute...but that's not the point."
"No," Teyla agreed. Her feet and their conversation had carried her to the steeper side of the mountain—Rodney was along this slope, but far enough away that she could not hear his voice except through the radio. Far enough that the Wraith would not notice him, following her trail. "It should not be."
"The point is..." Rodney faltered, took a breath and spoke as if he had to, as if there were a knife to his neck forcing the confession, "I thought it was impossible, but John, John and I...we work. It works. For now, anyway, and maybe...well, for now. So even though I'm not going to be having any kids with him, not unless we make some significant advances in genetics—which isn't out of the question, given Ancient and Asgard technology—but it's not to the point that we've seriously discussed it—"
"Rodney," Teyla said gently, "you owe me no justification. You are not Athosian, and what you have with John is not my concern."
"No?" Rodney asked. "Because no, we're not Athosian, but John and I, we are your teammates, and this—this—what we have, like you said. It's not a team thing, not a usual team thing, anyway."
"And that is important," she said as she began to ascend the incline.
"Hell yes, it's important! Teyla, if you, if Ronon—if you guys aren't okay with this, if the team can't—do you think John would—damn it, you know what this team means to him. And me, too, of course. But John...if it came down to that..." Rodney trailed off, but didn't close the line; she could hear him over it, waited until he said, quietly, "I wanted to tell you before this. You, Ronon, just with you guys, I wanted to talk it over. But John..."
"John does not share his heart easily."
"It's not that he doesn't trust you," Rodney said, sounding desperate. "It's not like that at all, he does, he's just—worse at this stuff than I am, and that's saying something, but he'd never want to—"
"I know. I know John," Teyla told him.
"Yeah. Yeah, you do, you've known him as long as I have, haven't you. Technically I met him first, but we didn't really...not until we came to Atlantis, and we met you the first day, so—"
"Yes, though you know him better, I think," Teyla said, her sentences shortened with her breath as she climbed. "You are both Earth men. Your language, your customs, are the same."
"Canadian really isn't just another way of saying American," Rodney said disparagingly, then conceded, "and besides, knowing about Earth or America or English wouldn't really help you to get John. That's not who he is, not really."
"No," Teyla said. "He is Atlantian. As we are."
"Yeah." Rodney's satisfaction was unmistakable. "That."
He hesitated, and she realized he was gathering his courage, was ready for it when he said, "Teyla—you're part of the team, and if you're not okay with this—with what we're... Look, I know it's not what you signed on for—"
"I was never on a team before this," Teyla said. "I had no expectations for it when I 'signed on.' As for what other expectations I carried, as an Athosian—we are Atlantian now. And I am here."
"Here?"
"In position," she explained, looking across the ridge, to where Michael's dart bay was marked in the snow. "Now we only have to wait."
"And hope the Wraith find the track you left and follow it."
"They have. They are." Teyla did not have to strain to sense them; their presence was a bitter aftertaste on her tongue, a stickiness on her hands that she could not wipe away. The cold air numbed her nose, but on it she imagined she smelled cobwebs and rot. "They are coming."
John had a reputation for being a pretty patient guy, but honestly, waiting wasn't among his preferred pastimes. On the scale of flying an F-15 Eagle in clear skies to getting his life sucked out by a Wraith, waiting was about a five on a good day, in a comfy chair, with a handheld game. Waiting crouched in icy bushes, with the cold leaching into his joints and every bruise on top of his other bruises making itself felt when he changed positions, scored markedly lower, even if there hadn't been Wraith to watch.
Ronon was no help; he hadn't moved a muscle in ten minutes, kneeling behind a fallen tree like he had been carved from a twin stump. It was patently unfair, because John knew Ronon hated the waiting game more than him; he had to be sedated if he was going to be stuck in the infirmary more than twenty-four hours. But Ronon knew how to wait when he had to, even if he didn't like it; and when Wraith were around Ronon did what he had to.
So he was startled when Ronon started to speak, his low voice carrying across to John and no further. Two conversations initiated in the same day, that had to be breaking a record. "You and McKay."
No record—the same conversation, resumed. Right. "Yeah."
"You're fucking?"
John shifted, regretted it when his P-90 bumped the sorest spot on his chest. "Sometimes, yeah."
"I asked you when I first came, what was between you and him. You said nothing."
"There wasn't anything," John said. "Not then."
Ronon didn't speak, but his eyebrows raised.
"There wasn't," John insisted, irritated. "I never imagined this would happen, not then. Not between me and Rodney, of all people."
"McKay's not your type?" The English slang sounded natural on Ronon's tongue, as it never did on Teyla's—differences between the Satedan and Athosian languages, or between the individuals speaking them? Or else a glitch in the Stargate translation techno-magic?
Either way, John understood. He shook his head. "More I wasn't Rodney's type. I didn't...my gaydar's always been shit. And I wasn't looking anyway, I wasn't looking for this."
"Didn't think you were."
If Ronon were Teyla, John thought, she probably would be asking him questions now. Not accusing, Teyla was never that direct; but she'd want to know, would be trying to understand. Or else she would understand without asking, as Teyla so often did, but then she would want him to understand, to be sure.
—He was sure, that was what scared the crap out of him; why this had happened at all, when he knew it shouldn't. John had never been great at following the rules but he'd never really been into breaking them, either; just sometimes they got in the way. But he hadn't been thinking of the rules that night, not out on the pier and not back in his quarters—it was always his quarters, Rodney always came over, but that night John had been the one leading them there. The corridors had been empty but they hadn't touched again, not until the doors had closed; being cautious, or maybe just shy.
John had made his share of mistakes in his life; more than his share, when you put waking the Wraith on the scale. Usually he knew when he made them, at the time or else after, even though most of them he'd make again; he hadn't had a choice.
He'd had a choice, with Rodney. But the thing was, it hadn't felt like a mistake. Not then and not later. Not until this moment, squatting in these wintry woods next to Ronon.
He hadn't wanted to say anything. Had wanted to keep that separate from this, personal life and professional duty stowed in different boxes—though seriously, how the hell had he thought that would work, when Rodney and Teyla and Ronon were in both?
Ronon wasn't even looking at him. Teyla might have been, but Ronon was watching the Wraith at the Stargate, not sparing a glance away—maybe he didn't trust John anymore, but he trusted the Wraith a hell of a lot less.
"Look," John said, "if you're not okay with this—"
Ronon didn't turn his head, but his eyes might have flicked to John for an instant. "I could get you in trouble."
"Yeah, you could." He kept his tone low and steady, knew Ronon would hear the challenge in it anyway. "Twice over, for Rodney being a guy, and for him being under my command. You could get me booted out of the Air Force and off Atlantis for good."
Ronon angled his head a degree toward John. "Nah," he said. "You wouldn't stay gone. We need you."
"You know our rules." He had explained them to Ronon, way back when, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' included. Ronon hadn't reacted, no more than usual, just shrugged and said that the Satedan military had had its own codes, that he was used to it. "I signed on, I agreed to follow them."
"McKay didn't."
"Doesn't change the fact that he's a man, and a member of my team." John kept his eyes on the Wraith, like Ronon was, even though the four drones standing guard hadn't moved more than a couple feet since the two of them had gotten in position. They had a mission to do; that was more important. While they were off-world, anyway. He didn't want to think about what might happen when they got back.
"Satedan squads were different," Ronon remarked. "Different rules."
"Yeah, but did those rules include screwing your same-sex teammates?"
"Yeah," Ronon said.
John's head snapped around. "Uh..."
Ronon's shrug was so nonchalant that John couldn't tell if he was being played; cool enough that he might not be. "Satedan military tradition, everyone was supposed to know everyone in their squad. At least a bit."
"'Know' in the Biblical sense?"
"Know in the fooling around sense," Ronon said. "Didn't have to be fucking. Mouth, hands, whatever."
"So your old teammates—Rakai, Ara, Tyre..."
"Yeah."
"Um." John turned back toward the Wraith, flexed his stiff arms while he considered this. In retrospect, he was just as glad Ronon wasn't looking him in the eye. "So, that time you told me you had someone back on Sateda..."
"No," Ronon said. "She...that was different. Not the army. But Tyre, everyone—that was being a soldier."
"A soldier."
"That's how it worked. Know them, know who you're protecting, who protects you. Their bodies were mine; my body was theirs."
"Jesus," John said. He was imagining in spite of himself. Tyre, Ara, and Rakai he'd met, and there'd been two others, too, dead at Wraith hands..."Your whole squad, that was six of you, right? And you all..."
"That's what made a team strong," Ronon said. "A Satedan squad. Kept us close."
"Close, okay." That was one way to put it. Jesus. And he'd thought shared bunks were bad.
"But you're not Satedan," Ronon said. "And McKay's not a solider anyway. You and McKay, it's different."
John could have lied, but Ronon would know. "Yeah, it's different."
Ronon was quiet for a while. "It was weird," he said at last. "When I first joined you guys. I knew other armies weren't like Sateda's, but Atlantis, you were strong. Strong like us, and loyal, too. I didn't get your rules at first."
"But you get them now," John said. The feeling in the pit of his stomach was the same hard knot he got before a mission to a new planet, or before pulling off a flight maneuver he'd only ever tried in simulations. Knowing everything could go to hell in an instant and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it, because he'd already walked through the gate, he'd already put himself in the cockpit.
He'd had that same knot sitting with Rodney on the pier, that single moment after. Rodney had been on his third beer, saying for the thousandth time in two months that it was probably for the best, that he wasn't cut out for that kind of happiness anyway. John had wanted him to shut up, and he could have just said so, he could have put down his own can and walked away, he could have done anything; but he'd leaned over—and god, the look on Rodney's face, two half moons reflecting in his eyes...
John couldn't see what was in Ronon's eyes now; in profile they were inscrutable, fixed on the Wraith eighty feet away. He didn't want to ask—never wanted this question to come up at all, and who cared if denial was the coward's way; he'd never claimed to be brave.
He jerked when his radio crackled, nearly brained himself on a low-hanging branch and fumbled for the button. "Teyla?"
Teyla's voice was harsh, forced low, to only a whispered hiss. "The Wraith are here. They have found the dart bay. Are you ready?"
John glanced at Ronon, his impassive features cracking into a deadly grin. The knot in his own gut was drowned in the flood of adrenaline, warming his stiff limbs. "Yeah, we're ready."
The Wraith were too far away for Teyla to be able to hear what they were saying, but she watched the two males confer as their drone soldiers stood watch around the outline of the dart bay. She had made plain tracks to it, and then carefully brushed her others away; the obvious conclusion was that she had somehow entered the bay, and the snow she had cleared away made apparent what sort of bay it was.
"What are they doing? Are they going for it?" Rodney demanded, an anxious whisper in her ear.
"I cannot tell yet." It was hard to get a read on the Wraith's surface thoughts, like trying to identify fish in a pool of murk; and she dared not probe deeper, for fear they might notice her presence. But she attempted to influence them as well she could—Think dart-y thoughts, Rodney had advised, and she tried.
She saw when one of them raised his head, and the sense of summoning was clear. "Yes," she said into the radio, "they are going for it."
"Yeah," John confirmed a second later, "the darts are—damn it!"
"What? What?" Rodney had no need to whisper, being safely distant from the Wraith; his voice was tight and high with apprehension.
"Only one dart left, the other's still here!"
"I see it," Teyla said. The single dart screamed into the sky above the ridge, circled once and then dropped toward the bay, plummeting through the air like a stone.
The Wraith moved out of the way, making room around the bay entrance. When the dart was a little more than a man's height above the ground, it jerked to a halt, just as the earth beneath its shadow suddenly fell away, rocky gray ground parting as neat as Atlantis's transporter doors would slide open. Triggered by the dart's proximity, just as Rodney had predicted.
"The bay is open," Teyla reported, "and the dart is about to enter." She looked up at the sky, but the second dart had not come; still keeping watch at the Stargate. "What should I do?"
"If we don't get it when it enters," Rodney warned, "we don't know what kind of safeguards Michael set up inside..."
"Do it." John was unhesitating; trusting in the plan, in her and Rodney's plan, as he always did. Even when it was not going to plan—John believed they would find a way to make it work. Believed in them, always.
She thought of John on the slope after the avalanche, not digging with them, wandering elsewhere—dazed, she had thought then; but searching, too. Had he guessed Rodney had discarded the life-signs detector? Or else he had not known what he was looking for, but believed in Rodney, believed that there was something to find.
"The dart is entering," Teyla said. "Fire in the hole." She said it less because there was anyone to warn, than because she never had other chances to say it; she rarely held the trigger herself, but now she closed her hand around it.
In the frozen pause after the detonator clicked, Teyla held her breath—one heartbeat, two, and then she saw the flash, heard the boom of the explosion, rocking the dart, knocking the Wraith down. They had unfortunately been too far away to be killed, but the dart, at least, was foundering; the C-4 blasts had pinpointed its engines, crippling if not destroying it.
"It's down," she said, just as over the radio John said, "Yeah, and there goes the other one—Ronon—"
Then, over them, across the mountainside, Teyla heard a grumbling rumble building to a roar, already too familiar from earlier today.
The Wraith, not so experienced, were staring around themselves wildly, jumping to their feet with stunners at ready, but their weapons were useless against the enemy bearing down on them. The snow from the overhang above, destabilized by the earlier avalanche, came sliding down like a whitewater torrent made solid, crashing over the damaged Wraith dart, driving it down into the bay, before it engulfed the Wraith.
This, too, Rodney had predicted, and Teyla had positioned herself on the stone ridge accordingly, out of its path. What he had not predicted was the second Wraith dart, swooping down from the sky just as the avalanche hit. Its white beam flickered over the Wraith on the mountainside, swallowing half of them safely in.
At least she knew the dart was not over the gate, the chance John and Ronon needed—but that was less reassuring than it might be. No sooner had the avalanche slowed, before Teyla dared move from the safety of the ridge, then the dart dove—not back to the Stargate, but rather toward the ridge. Mere yards from where she was hidden, the white beam flashed, leaving five Wraith standing in the snow before her.
Above them, the dart whirled in the air and shot back toward the gate. "John," she warned in a whisper, "it returns," and she switched off her radio.
The dart might trouble John and Ronon, but she had problems of her own. She could feel the Wraith minds, their anger roiling like a storm. They were enraged, and hungry, hunting for whoever had attacked them, knowing she must be close, and Teyla shrank back against the scant concealment of the ridge's granite, praying to the Ancestors that the thunderous pounding of her heart would not give her away.
John had already worked out with Ronon who got which Wraith, so the moment the second dart twisted around in the usual uncanny violation of aerodynamics and rocketed off toward the mountain, neither of them wasted a second. They sprang from the underbrush, John aiming at the drone to the left, holding down the trigger until the masked Wraith staggered and collapsed under the P-90's onslaught.
As soon as it was down, he dashed forward, ignoring the other three, confident that Ronon would take them out by the time he reached the DHD. He kept his head ducked low as he ran. A single blue stunner beam rippled past him, but it only zapped a spruce sapling. Then all the Wraith were on the ground, and John was at the DHD, punching in Atlantis's sequence so fast he jammed his fingers.
The whoosh of the wormhole exploding into being was the best damn thing he'd heard all day. He looked into the shimmering blue, hit his radio. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, come in."
"Colonel Sheppard," Woolsey answered; he must have been in the control room, waiting for contact. "What is your—"
"No time," John cut him off. "Wraith have been holding the 'gate, we got to get it open on your end—can you dial us back, pronto?"
"Understood, Colonel," Woolsey said. "The dialing sequence is already set, we'll connect again as soon as it's closed."
"Great." John stepped back from the DHD. The event horizon blinked out as he exhaled, then fountained out again before he could take a second breath.
If the Wraith on the other end were wise to them—he held his breath until his radio crackled. "Colonel Sheppard?"
"Still here," John said. "Make sure you keep the wormhole active until you send the reinforcements. We need a jumper, with drones—we've got one or two Wraith darts, and—" he looked around; Ronon had dispatched the Wraith on the ground with his usual lethal thoroughness, "—maybe ten Wraith."
"Major Lorne's team is heading for the jumper bay," Woolsey replied. They would have been standing by, per the official protocol, since Atlantis had failed to connect. That was the advantage of Mr. Woolsey's red-tape fetish; his adherence to the rules was as reliable as the tides. John had never properly appreciated pencil-pushing before Woolsey, but when navigating the unpredictable maelstrom that was life in Pegasus, bureaucratic pedantry was an airbus—difficult to maneuver and no fun to fly, but it stayed in the air. At times like this, he could almost forgive the endless emails about his tardy mission reports. "Colonel, what is your team's situation—"
"John," Teyla said, "it returns."
John automatically looked to the sky. Ronon didn't bother, charging for the safety of the forest, and John sprinted after him. They made it just as the dart screamed back over the clearing. The shriek of its overcharged engines sounded furious, a temper tantrum, and Ronon was grinning darkly.
"Colonel?" Woolsey was asking urgently.
"Just a little dart trouble," John reported, watching the dart's tight circles over the Stargate. Under the thick tree cover, the dart's scooping beam couldn't reach them. "We're safe. Tell Major Lorne to be ready for a single dart in a lousy mood—forget the cloak, shields up, the moment he's through the gate."
"They're on their way now."
Rodney's voice broke in. "Sheppard? Ronon?"
"Rodney, yeah, we got through—"
"Teyla's not answering me."
John's back stiffened. The sweat raised by their attack on the Wraith was drying on his face, freezing when the wind blew over it. "Teyla? Teyla, come in." Static answered, and John stared at Ronon, touched his radio again. "Rodney, you said the C-4 might trigger another avalanche—"
"It did, but she was out of its way," Rodney said. "And the Wraith weren't, she should have been fine, but now I'm showing multiple signals on the LSD—"
"Sheppard," Ronon said, as the jumper exploded out of the wormhole—and that sight should have been another highlight of John's day, but he was too cold now to care.
The Wraith were so close Teyla could smell them, not their illusory presence, but the clammy stench of their ships, their moldering leather coats and the lizard-cool mustiness of their flesh, overpowering the pungent scent of the drooping fir boughs that camouflaged her. She lay flat on her stomach on the granite ridge, and felt like she could not breathe, with that stink filling her nostrils. This perhaps was what Rodney felt in too-small spaces, what he might have felt trapped under the snow this morning, her heart beating so fast and loud she could scarcely think over it.
But the Wraith were searching, and if they found her, they would stun her, leaving her defenseless; they might take her captive, but they as easily might drain her life. She could feel their hunger. They did not care for the cold any more than she did; it sapped their strength, made them slow and sluggish like serpents at night, though they could still strike faster and more powerfully than any human. They wanted strength—her strength, her life.
As she wanted theirs. Slow and silent, Teyla brought down the muzzle of her P-90. The dart's beam had rescued both of the white-haired males; they were the most dangerous, and without them the drones might be so confused that she could escape. One of the males was scarcely a body-length away from where she was concealed. He was turning away in his search, gaze on the ground; he would not have time to react.
Teyla drew a breath of freezing air, deep enough to make her lungs ache, released it in a plume of white mist. Then she pulled the gun's trigger, shoulders braced against its kick. The automatic rounds slammed into the Wraith's gut, sending him staggering back. She let him fall and swept the gun around, slicing the spray of bullets across the nearest drone soldier's legs, cutting into its knees and dropping the Wraith onto the snow.
Two bolts of blue stabbed toward the rock as the other drones brought their stunners to bear, but Teyla had already leapt from it. She hurtled down the mountainside between the trees, skidding and churning up snow, as the furious Wraith behind her gave chase.
Lorne knew what he was doing; when the dart fired, the jumper's shields shimmered in a translucent shell around the craft, holding strong. Two drone weapons shot out of its ports, crossed each other in the air and curved toward the dart, so fast they were only golden blurs.
The dart pilot was smart for a Wraith, though; rather than trying to keep up in the outmatched dogfight, it turned engines and blasted off toward the mountains, weaving erratically as a drunk driver trying to walk the line. The drone missiles gamely followed, but one exploded against a stone outcropping and the other took out a lone pine tree, as the dart disappeared behind one of the higher peaks.
"Lorne, come in," John radioed up, as the Stargate flicked out, Atlantis not wasting more energy maintaining the wormhole when the jumper could dial back. Per protocol, naturally.
"Sorry, sir," Lorne answered. "That's one slippery son of a bitch, should we pursue—"
"Forget about it," John ordered, "get down here." He jogged for the clearing, Ronon beside him.
The jumper was touching down when John's radio hissed back to life. "John?"
John almost slipped in the snow. "Teyla!" Beside him, Ronon's stride faltered for a step, and over the radio Rodney echoed John's relief.
"Three Wraith are pursuing me," Teyla said, her words coming short and staccato, the puffing cadence of speaking while running. "I am downhill from the ridge."
"We're coming for you," John told her. "We've got a jumper, we're on our way," and never mind landing; he'd take out some trees with drones if they had to.
"Sir!" Lorne cut in. "The dart's heading back this ways, and our shield's down—"
"Hold on, Teyla," John said, running for the jumper. "Lorne, get that ship back up in the air—"
Ronon made it first, throwing himself through the jumper's rear hatch. It was closing as the jumper lifted off, Lorne always quick in emergencies, and Ronon reached out for John, caught his arm and yanked him inside, as the dart came screaming back at them.
"Hold on, Teyla," John told her, as another blue stun beam flashed beside her, surrounding a spruce in coruscating light, every needle bright and defined for a lightning instant, leaving blinding afterimages. Without the breath to reply, Teyla dodged and kept moving, stumbling down the steep slope. She was more sliding than running; the only grace was that the Wraith were no better in the snow than her, floundering behind her, and she thought she might escape.
The next stun beam rippled over a thicket layered in crystalline ice, beautiful as a lattice of glass. Scintillating blue light sparked along her leg as she brushed by it, numbing it from knee to toes, like she suddenly had a block of wood instead of a foot. Her next step came down wrong on that block, and she tripped, tumbling head over heels like an arecace nut tossed on the surf.
The spinning world stopped moving in degrees, from whirling to rocking to settling once more into solid shapes. Teyla tasted blood in her mouth, and her fingers were cramping with cold; one of her gloves was torn, and the snow against her raw palm burned like metal as she pushed herself up.
"Teyla!" someone yelled, and she reached to cover her ears before she realized the voice was in her ear. The radio fizzed as Rodney shouted her name, desperation hoarsening his voice to almost unrecognizable, "Teyla, are you—"
"I am here, I think," she said, sitting up, and looked about herself, just in time to duck the stun beam passing overhead. The shock of the near miss restored her sense, and she scrambled to her feet, circling back behind a slanting pine log to evade the stunners. Her leg was tingling, but it would support her weight; her stomach dipped and twisted, though, throwing her off-balance, so that she had to cling to the tree. "The Wraith are—"
The Wraith was right before her—the male grimaced at her, close enough to bite. She was not armed—the P-90's hook had torn free, its weight gone from her vest, and she had no sticks—but she threw a punch, and kicked out when the Wraith blocked.
He could have had his drones stun her, but Wraith preferred to drain conscious victims, preferred the taste of fear to the bland peace of oblivion. He wanted her awake, thought her prey he could manage, and in that conceit was her chance. The Wraith snarled as Teyla twisted away—there, the P-90 was laying in the snow, black and deadly, and if she could but reach it she would—
The Wraith's blow caught her hard across the face, sent her flying back. "Teyla!" she heard in her ear, through the tinny radio speaker, just before she smashed into the tree. The rough bark scratched open her cheek and the impact set her head spinning again, white ice and dark boughs whirling around her, and the Wraith looming over her, a wavering nightmare. She groped for a weapon instinctively, but he seemed far away, a distant and disconnected dream, too far away to hurt her...
A noise rent the mountain's quiet, shattering the illusion. Teyla heard it without understanding it, but the Wraith reared back, away from her. As she struggled to find her balance, back to the tree, she saw his yellow eyes widen as he turned his head, toward the echoes ringing through the forest.
The next retort she recognized—the sharp burst of a single gunshot, too far down-slope to hit anything, warning shots fired into the air.
Pistol shots. Rodney.
"There's another one," the Wraith snarled. "Find it, have it! Go!" and he waved the two drones toward the gunshots. As they headed off down the slope, he turned back to her, lips pulled back from vicious teeth in a sickening travesty of a smile. "They'll take their health from what they find. You, though, are mine," he hissed, and raised his hand, the slit in the palm gaping like a hideous, bloodless wound.
Teyla's head was pounding, and when she grimaced she felt the blood dripping down her cheek, cooling on her skin. She doubted she looked much more pleasant than the monster before her. "No, I am not," she told the Wraith, and brought up her own arm as the Wraith's hand came down, stabbing the hunting knife in her fist into the feeding slit.
The Wraith snarled, mouth contorting, and slammed his arm around to backhand her, but Teyla had already thrown herself down into the snow. She skidded half her length, far enough for her outstretched hands to clutch the P-90. Rolling onto her back, she fired up, expending the last of the clip into the Wraith's eyes.
The monster screamed and collapsed, clawing at his face as he thrashed on the ground. Teyla wrenched back his arm, pulled her knife from his hand and sliced the blade across his throat, deep. Dark blood poured out onto the snow, silencing the shrieks from the inhuman throat, as Teyla leaned against the tree, fighting for breath.
Rodney was armed, but injured, and there were two Wraith drones coming for him—drawn by his fire, as he had known they would be. Hoped they would be; hoping the distraction would give her a chance.
Only when she automatically reached for her radio did she realize she no longer heard Rodney's voice. The earpiece had been broken when she hit the tree. She could not tell him she lived, could not tell him how many Wraith were hunting him.
She left the Wraith dying in the snow, and ran for her teammate.
By the time John crossed to the jumper's cockpit, Lorne had piloted them up above the treetops. As John entered, the major took the jumper into a steep dive, the forest below tilting wildly in the viewscreen. John grabbed for the back of one of the rear chairs, feeling his stomach plummet at the sight even though his feet stayed firm on the floor, thanks to the inertial dampeners.
"It's the dart, sir," Lorne said through gritted teeth. Lieutenant Lee was hunched over the copilot console, controlling two more weapons drones, their trajectories inscribed across the HUD in glowing lines. "It's making a run for—"
The dart arrowed past the viewscreen, flying as straight and true as if it had been the real deal, thrown by a giant in a mile-wide bar game. It passed the jumper at better than mach 2, just as the Stargate below burst to life.
The bastard must have dialed with the onboard DHD, John realized, and then the dart bull's-eyed the wormhole, vanishing into the blue circle. Fifty points, John thought irreverently, as Lorne swore, "Shit!" Then he glanced at his commanding officer, hastily amended, "Sorry, sir—"
"Forget it," John said, "get us up to the ridge, now—"
"Sheppard!" Ronon snapped from the rear compartment, as Rodney's voice came over the radio, "Teyla—I keep trying, she's not answering, but there's two life-signs over there—shit, oh shit, the other two are heading straight this way, if they find me, I can't even walk, I'm a sitting—"
"Rodney," John said urgently, "keep it down, don't draw attention to your position." He took over the HUD with a thought, muttering an apology to Lorne as he focused on the terrain below, mapping sensor data over the visuals of the mountains. He expanded the range until the life-signs appeared—one lone signal, stationary, with two other strong signals closing in on it fast, and another signal heading in the same direction. The final signal at the edge was faint, weakening—if Teyla had lost to the Wraith—
No, the Wraith would have stunned her and left her healthy, or else would have drained all her life, John told himself; they didn't leave leftovers, not when they were fighting. So Teyla would be that single moving dot, heading for Rodney, though she wouldn't make it in time... "Rodney, maintain radio silence, if they can't hear you they might not find you—"
"Sheppard," Ronon called from the back, "how low can we go in this thing?"
John looked at him, then checked the viewscreen and tapped Lorne's shoulder. "Can you manage twenty-five feet? It'd be more than just skimming the treetops."
Lorne's gene was strong and his piloting skills solid; he could fly circles around, say, Rodney, but he never found the jumpers as easy to handle as John did. He nodded now, though, keeping his eyes locked on the display. "Yes, sir, I can."
"Then cut the speed and bring us down. Here," and he pointed.
Lorne nodded again, stiffly with his neck stick-straight. The jumper decelerated in a split second with the usual lack of discernible momentum, drifting in the air only a few yards off-target.
Ronon hit the switch to lower the jumper's back hatch, and the change in wind resistance made them pitch and yaw. "Easy," John said, leaning over the major to get one hand on the controls. Jumpers didn't like serving two masters, but Lorne trusted him enough to release the stick, and John guided the ship lower, between two trees.
In the back, Ronon had unclipped most of the mesh cargo netting, leaving only the rear end attached. He had his blaster drawn, crouching by the hatch as it opened the rest of the way.
"Oh, son of a bitch," Rodney hissed. "This is—John, are you—"
John heard the gunshots twice over, over the radio and, distantly, through the open hatch, the sound snatched and scattered by the wind—four shots and then nothing. "Rodney?" he shouted over the airstream whistling through the jumper's hatch, and screw radio silence anyway, "Rodney, cavalry's here, come in, damn it—"
"I'm going," Ronon announced. Grabbing the nylon netting tight in one hand with his blaster in the other, he took a flying leap out of the back of the jumper, bellowing a challenge to the Wraith or the wind as he swung out over the forest.
She was bruised and bleeding, running as fast as she believed she could manage in the snow and with her lungs aching, but the new pistol shots crashing through the snowy forest sped Teyla's feet. Further down the slope—much further, too far—she saw a flash of blue through the trees, and then there was no more gunfire.
Rodney—the drone soldiers were hungry with the cold; they wouldn't waste any time feeding. Teyla could have cried out in her helplessness, but she had no breath to spare. Her fingers closed around her P-90 as she ran—she would not be too late for vengeance, at least, bitter consolation though that was.
With all her mind and body devoted to the race, she did not hear the noise above her, did not register the downdraft beating against her as anything more than the freezing mountain winds. She did not realize they were no longer alone until she heard the howl, so defiant even the wind couldn't steal it away, a roar no Wraith could make—only one man could, that she knew.
When she came stumbling through the icy bracken some moments later, she was not surprised to find the two Wraith drones flattened on the ground, and Ronon standing over them. At the crunch of her boots he whirled around, his blaster's energy cell glowing red behind his fist.
Teyla froze and raised her hands, knowing his weapon would not be set to stun now. Ronon's eyes widened for an instant; then his expression cooled and hardened like molten metal plunged into a bucket of water. He holstered his blaster, said, "You took out the Wraith."
"Yes," Teyla said, and hurried past him. "Rodney—"
"They didn't get to him," Ronon said, following her toward the wide spruce she had left Rodney under. "Must be stunned, if he's this quiet."
Rodney lay under the prickly boughs, eyes closed and still enough that Teyla's breath caught, until she saw he was still breathing. When she checked his pulse, it was steady and strong, though the skin of his throat was cool to her touch.
He was still holding his sidearm, even stunned; Ronon picked it up out of his lax fingers, put it back in his thigh holster. "One of them was already shot half-dead," he said, and added, as if Rodney could hear him, "Not bad, McKay."
Teyla tilted up her head, seeing through the branches to the boxy tube of the jumper against the sky. "How do we get him to it?"
Ronon cocked his head. "Carry him, I guess."
"Hold it!"
Teyla looked up again. John was clambering down the black mesh netting hanging from the back of the jumper. It ended somewhat more than his height above the ground; he let himself dangle from it, dropped the final few feet into the thick snow bank and climbed out, brushing off the white flakes. "Tell me that looks worse than it is," he ordered, pointing at her face.
Teyla touched her cheek, where the blood had dried stiff and sticky; she had quite forgotten the cut. "It is. I am all right."
"Good. How is he?" he asked, kneeling by Rodney, pulling off his glove to check his pulse, just as Teyla had done, though John's hand lingered for a moment longer, fingers curving gently against the line of Rodney's jaw.
"Stunned," Teyla said, "but no worse than that; the Wraith did not touch him."
John stood again, waved up at the jumper and said, "Throw it down," into his radio. A moment later a bundle of netting and more dropped into the snow. John unfolded the portable travois, said to Ronon, "None of Lorne's team wants to come down, they're all scared of not measuring up, after your Tarzan impression. Kind of a hard act to follow."
Ronon shrugged. "Wasn't trying to measure up," he said, though the gleam in his eye said otherwise.
He and John moved Rodney onto the travois in one quick, efficient lift, careful with his splinted leg; then they were left with the puzzle of hooking it up to the netting. As they untangled the nylon strands, John explained the events down at the Stargate, and the dart's escape. "Which is why we have to hurry," he said, glancing up at the sky, "before they're back with reinforcements."
They had almost completed readying the netting when Rodney awoke, blinking up at them. "Okay," he said hoarsely. "Not dead, then?"
"Not yet," Ronon told him cheerfully.
"None of us. Don't sit up," John warned, putting one hand flat on his chest to keep him down. "Take it easy, you'll be back on Atlantis before you know it."
"Just tell me it'll be warm," Rodney begged.
"I'll warm you up myself," John said flippantly, and then abruptly snatched away his hand. His teasing face had gone still, eyes dark with shame, or something like it.
Rodney's eyes had slid shut again; he didn't notice. "Hold you to that," he mumbled.
John looked at her, at Ronon. Then he shook his head, gaze falling back to Rodney as if he were too tired to lift it away. "Yeah," he said, so quiet Teyla hardly heard it.
"John," Ronon said, and John's head came up again, fast as if he were blocking an attack, but his eyes remained unreadable.
Teyla was dizzy with fatigue, giddy with relief, with the knowledge that she lived, and Rodney and John and Ronon, too. She did not think she could run another step, but John at this moment might have been on the mountain's peak. Too far away for her to chase after him, and her heart ached like her legs, like her lungs.
But Ronon had the strength left that she did not. "I get your rules now," he told John, matter-of-factly. "They're stupid. Sateda's, too."
John stared at him. Ronon's shrug included the mountain, the jumper, the four of them. "It's what we do out here that counts," he said. "Who we protect, who's protecting us. So yeah, McKay's yours. And you're his. And he's mine, and Teyla's his."
Teyla did not need to know why he was saying this to understand his meaning, nor to see the comprehension in John's eyes, the hope. She reached out, took John's gloved hand in hers. "We are yours," she said, "and you are ours. Both of you. Whatever else might change, this does not—you cannot change it."
John ducked his head, turned aside, but he did not pull his hand free right away, and his fingers curled around hers, squeezed before letting go. Then he patted Rodney's shoulder. "Hey, Sleepy, you up for a ride?"
Rodney's heavy eyelids dragged open. "Wazzntslee...Ride?"
"Need to lift you up to the jumper. Just hold still, you'll be fine."
"What? This—"
"No sitting up," John warned again, reaching over him to buckle the travois's straps across his shoulders.
Rodney turned his head, examined the netting and travois set-up, his eyes expanding to white-rimmed panic. "I don't think this is—"
"You'll be fine," John said, then leaned over him. "And I'll be making it up to you later, as promised," he murmured, turning their faces close for a moment, before pulling away.
Ronon grinned, poked Rodney's head. "Come on, McKay, aren't you ready to get off this mountain?"
"Well, if you put it that way..."
John radioed up to the jumper, and the netting stretched, the travois lifting off the ground. It swayed, and John steadied it with one hand.
"Um, not this ready—!" Rodney yelped.
"You will be fine, Rodney," Teyla called up, as he was pulled above their heads. Truthfully, she wished she might be borne up the same way; climbing the netting would be rough on her cold-numbed fingers. But then they would be in the jumper, and then they would be home, with Kanaan and Torren, and her kettle—she would not at this moment like to choose which she more desired to hold, her son, or a steaming cup of tea.
"So." John rocked back on his boot heels. "A secret lab, two avalanches, two darts, a dozen Wraith—and we're still here."
"All four of us," Teyla said, glancing up at the travois swinging between the treetops. Rodney's fretful chatter carried thinly over the wind, anxious but constant; they did not need to hear his words to know he would be well.
Ronon stretched like he was waking from a nap. "So, we still got it?"
John, looking between them, broke into a grin as unexpected and overwhelming as an avalanche.
"Yes," and Teyla heard the laughter in her voice echo off the trees, melt into the snow. "We do."