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sga_flashficTitle: The Way to Go Home
Author: Kitestringer
Rating: G, gen (Rodney, John, Ronon, and Teyla)
Spoilers: Nothing specific; only very oblique references to events in “Trinity”
Notes: About 2600 words long. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maverick4oz, callmerizzo, mboyd, and pirl for comments, suggestions, and encouragement. This is inspired by a certain scene in a certain favorite movie of mine; I probably should have known I wouldn't be the only one inspired by it. *g*
Summary: The team gets drunk and compares scars.
It’s the little things that make it hard to forget you’re on another planet. When he tuned out the conversation inside the jumper, Rodney could hear the strange chirping of an insect—what he thought was probably an insect—that always reminded him of a car alarm activating, and the breeze coming through the open door of the jumper smelled sweet in a very distinctive way he’d never experienced before coming to the mainland after dark. Katie told him it was the combined scents of two flowering plants releasing clouds of phenols to attract nocturnal insects, which was something he felt rather smug about having listened closely enough to remember.
His first night on the mainland, Rodney had sneezed nonstop for five minutes, a reaction he now was forced to admit might have been at least partially psychosomatic. Since then, he’d come to almost welcome the smell of the night air here, and the incessant chirping of the insects—in fact, a more sentimental person might even describe it as an attachment. He did welcome his team’s occasional trips here to engage in “R&R,” as the Colonel generously described evenings spent drinking or playing cards in the jumper, parked just outside the Athosian settlement.
“Should one of us stay sober?” Rodney tapped his fingers on the arm of his seat and eyed the ceramic flagon with longing. “You know, just in case?”
“I’m sober, Rodney,” John said with a lazy grin. Rodney supposed he had actually never seen John drunk before, so he wasn’t sure what to look for. At the moment, John was slouched in his seat, leg thrown over the arm, a cup of whatever Teyla had called this Athosian brew dangling from one hand. It was possible, now that Rodney thought about it, that it was John’s first cup. Ronon, on the other hand...
“You worry too much, McKay,” Ronon slurred. He slapped Rodney heartily on the shoulder and gave him a brilliant, gleaming smile. Rodney had to blink against it.
“How did you ever manage to keep your teeth so perfect and white all that time you were on the run? Are you some kind of genetic superman, or are you just really inventive with methods of dental hygiene?”
There was a long pause, and Ronon exploded into laughter.
“Ah, thank you,” Rodney said, wiping droplets of spit from his face as Ronon nearly fell out of his seat. “I have a feeling it’s option B. Right, I need another one...”
Teyla leaned over and, with exaggerated formality, poured him more of the spicy golden liquid. She lowered herself to one knee and offered him the cup with both hands. “May we have more days together than apart, my friend.”
Rodney hesitated as he reached for the cup. “You didn’t just propose to me or anything, did you? Because, honestly, Teyla, you know I like you very much, but...”
Ronon and Teyla were both laughing now, so hard it looked like they might rupture something vital. They never seemed to find him this funny when they were sober, Rodney realized, frowning. John smiled indulgently at the three of them and took another sip; Rodney sipped along with him, savoring the heat that slid down his throat and spread through his chest. “Teyla, what did you say this is brewed from again?”
“I didn’t,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And believe me when I tell you, Doctor, you do not want to know.”
“Hm.” Rodney looked down into his cup and swirled it around, then smelled it. “If only we had replicators like on Star Trek. Then we could indulge in this stuff at our leisure, without having to worry about the step where it’s fermented in a goat’s bladder with rat salivary enzymes, or whatever it is you’re not telling me.”
“Yeah, now replicators would be cool,” John said, pointing for emphasis. “Why haven’t you built one of those yet, Rodney?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Not even the Ancients could have managed that, Colonel.”
“Yeah, but you’re smarter than they were, remember?”
Rodney stiffened. He looked away from John and finished the rest of his cup in three long swallows, as he tried to think of a sufficiently biting response. Teyla spoke up quickly, saving him the trouble.
“Colonel, what is that scar, there?” Teyla pointed at the leg John was dangling over the arm of his seat. His pant leg had ridden up until a narrow strip of skin was showing above his boot, revealing a small, jagged scar.
“Oh, that? Old skateboarding injury. Twelve years old, went off the sidewalk and down a hill. That’s from the piece of broken glass that caught me on the way down. Needed five stitches.”
“That what they call a scar where you come from, Sheppard?” Ronon stood abruptly, swaying a bit before approaching the front of the jumper and plunking one foot down on the control console.
“Careful!” John said, quickly sitting up.
Ronon seemed not to be listening. He rolled up his pant leg to reveal a long line of puckered, scarred skin, extending upward from inside his boot. “That goes past my knee,” he said proudly.
Rodney stumbled across the jumper and steadied himself with a hand on Teyla’s shoulder. “What the hell is that from?”
“Knife fight.” Ronon grinned at each of them in turn. “Over a gun.”
“Oh, now that makes perfect sense.” Rodney folded his arms over his chest. “And who came out of that one with the fair gun at his side, hm?”
Ronon pulled his gun from his holster, twirled it a few times, then reholstered it. “Been with her ever since.”
“It must have been a very impressive wound, Ronon.” Teyla smiled sweetly and took another swig. “And for such a noble cause.”
“It was worth it.” Ronon said as they all fell back into their seats. Once Ronon had made himself comfortable, he put his feet up on Rodney’s lap.
“Ow, hello, do you mind?” Rodney made a halfhearted attempt to push them away, but they didn’t even budge.
“What about you, Teyla?” Ronon asked, digging his boots in deeper.
“I...do have a scar that is...also impressive. But I am afraid you will simply have to take my word for it.”
“Oh, now, come on. We showed you ours,” John said with a smirk.
Teyla glanced down at her BDU pants. “Perhaps another time.”
Rodney rubbed absently at his forearm, his face suddenly burning hot. He hoped to God no one would try to make him go next. “So, uh, Ronon. What about that one?”
Ronon regarded him through half-closed eyes. “Hmm?”
“There.” Rodney pointed at a faint patch of scarred skin on Ronon’s left arm.
Ronon twisted his arm and craned his head to look at it, rubbing it gently with his finger. “Oh. It was a tattoo.”
John spoke up. “You mean like one of those deals where you get drunk, get your girlfriend’s name tattooed on your chest, and then find out a week later that she’s sleeping with your CO, so then you have to go and spend all your savings on laser surgery to get rid of a tattoo that’s barely even healed?”
Rodney took a moment to join everyone else in staring silently at John.
“What?” John sat up straighter in his seat. “I know a guy that happened to.”
Rodney snickered and Teyla smiled as she poured herself another cup, but Ronon was still stroking the patch of skin on his arm thoughtfully. “It was a ship I served on, back on Sateda. The Ameceta.”
“What, you mean like a spaceship?” Rodney asked.
“No, a ship that floats on the ocean.”
“You were in the Navy?” John did a bad job of keeping the disappointment out of his voice. “How the hell did I not know that?”
“We don’t—didn’t—divide our military like you do,” Ronon said. “All soldiers served on land and at sea.”
“Huh.” Rodney sat back and gave up trying to get Ronon’s feet off of him. “So what happened? Why’d you have it removed?”
“Rodney...” John’s voice was full of quiet warning, but Ronon began to speak before Rodney had a chance to defend himself.
“We were on a mission to deliver bombs—bombs we weren’t supposed to have. They’d been outlawed by the Council, but the military used them anyway. If anyone found out, though...” Ronon shifted in his chair and downed the rest of his drink. “So no one knew we were out there.”
“Must have been some bombs,” John said, eyebrows raised.
“Not as powerful as yours, but powerful enough. Better than anything else we had to work with against the Wraith. But they were outlawed for a reason—they’d never been reliable or safe to transport. And anyone on that mission who didn’t believe that learned it the hard way.”
“One of them detonated.”
At the sound of Rodney’s voice, Ronon looked up, but his mind was clearly elsewhere now. “Yeah. Ship sank like a stone. A lot of us were sleeping below deck when it happened. Some died in the explosion, most went down with the ship. Some got out and above deck just in time to see the whole ship go under.”
Rodney shuddered, staring down into his empty cup. He was trying to think of something good to say, when Teyla appeared in front of him and filled his cup, then Ronon’s. “How did you survive?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“We found stuff to hold on to and waited. One guy kept diving underwater, trying to find a radio or something he could rewire, but pretty soon the struxes started circling.”
“Struxes?” John was leaning forward now, cup forgotten.
“Really big fish that eat anything. Including people.”
“Yeah, we have those on Earth, too,” Rodney said. “So...what...did you fight them?”
“With what? We didn’t have weapons. We stuck together in groups of ten or twelve and tried to stay still, but...it was hard. No one wanted to be on the outside of the group. And then once someone was bleeding, it didn’t matter how still you were.” He paused to take a long drink, then continued. “They started taking us, one by one. When that blood was in the water, others came. Seemed like hundreds. It went on for... It went on for a long time. Two days and two nights.”
“Jesus.” Rodney glanced at John, who was staring at Ronon in what looked like openmouthed awe.
“They’d get close enough to look at you—cold eyes, nothing in them, no warmth, no life. Like the Wraith...” He paused for a second. “Yeah. Like that. And then when it came for you, you tried to fight—kicking, punching, screaming. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. When it did, it would go for the next guy. My taskmaster...” Ronon’s whole demeanor changed, became angrier. Rodney tried to sit very still. “I should have seen it then. But I was stupid. Just a kid.”
Rodney turned to John for clarification, but he looked just about as clueless as Rodney felt. Teyla was staring pointedly, strangely at Ronon. “How were you rescued?” she asked, this time in a loud, almost harsh voice.
Ronon seemed to snap out of it then, reverting to detached, monotone nonchalance. “A big fishing ship came. They used their rafts and nets to get us on board. They had to throw their haul overboard, and we nearly sank their ship with our weight, but they took us anyway. We sat there and watched the struxes go at the fish that had been dumped overboard. Looked like the whole ocean was boiling.”
John whispered something Rodney couldn’t hear, and Ronon answered. “Three hundred sixteen soldiers. Out of eleven hundred that went into the water.”
It was then that Ronon swung his feet down off of Rodney’s lap. Everything from Rodney’s knees down was numb now; he leaned forward and stomped his feet on the floor, as Ronon collapsed to sit cross-legged in front of the flagon and poured himself another generous drink. He held it up to the three of them with a small smile. “Never even delivered a single bomb,” he said, and then threw his head back and drained the whole cup.
John and Teyla seemed lost in their own thoughts. Even slightly drunk, Rodney was smart enough to know that anything he said was likely to somehow end up being perceived as inappropriate, so he kept his comments to himself and sipped his drink quietly and looked at Ronon, who was now sitting with his back to him. His dreads had slipped free of the band that tied them back, and they hung loose around the smooth skin of his shoulders. As it often did, Ronon’s astonishing youth struck Rodney suddenly—a feeling that made him want to bully anyone who would do him harm and come to the simultaneous, contradictory understanding that he was the one who would best be protected by Ronon. Rodney knew he had to be at least ten years older, but he’d endured only a tiny fraction of as much hardship and tragedy.
John swiveled his chair to look out the jumper’s front window. “No wonder you like coming to the mainland,” he said. “Being in Atlantis must get...”
“Disturbing,” Rodney said.
Ronon shrugged. “It’s okay. You can get used to almost anything.”
“You know, when I was your age...” Everyone looked at Rodney with interest as he began to speak, but he lost his train of thought and trailed off as he looked back at them. At his age what? He already had tenure? Universities in four different countries were still competing to recruit him? He’d left his home country and become completely estranged from his entire family by choice? He groped for what he could possibly have been about to say that had any relevance to what Ronon had just told them. Ronon, in particular, was looking at him with the same impatient yet earnest regard he showed when Rodney explained some aspect of wormhole physics for everyone’s benefit, like he wanted to hear what Rodney had to say in spite of himself.
“Nothing,” Rodney muttered at last. He stood and walked out the door of the jumper. Got to see a man about a horse, he thought, tripping over a branch as he searched for a sufficiently secluded tree. The car-alarm bugs were a cheerful orchestra playing all around him, and his feet buzzed with every step, as if the heels of Ronon’s boots were still planted in the meat of his thighs. He heard the low sound of Ronon’s voice coming from the jumper, followed by Teyla laughing in that way she almost never did, like something inside her had been knocked loose, a part of herself she normally kept tightly bound and hidden away. Rodney only heard her laugh like that when they were here together. He wondered, as he leaned against the tree, letting his forehead rest against the cool, smooth surface of the trunk, whether he, too, seemed different here than he did anywhere else.
Later, after John had brought them back to Atlantis and deposited him in his bed, Rodney stared at the framed degrees on his wall until he fell into a jerky, sweaty sleep that lasted until morning. He dreamed that all the people he cared most about were being taken, one by one, pulled beneath the surface of the ocean by creatures with lifeless eyes and hungry hands, and all he could do was watch as he lost the only home he’d known since childhood.
Author: Kitestringer
Rating: G, gen (Rodney, John, Ronon, and Teyla)
Spoilers: Nothing specific; only very oblique references to events in “Trinity”
Notes: About 2600 words long. Thanks to
maverick4oz, callmerizzo, mboyd, and pirl for comments, suggestions, and encouragement. This is inspired by a certain scene in a certain favorite movie of mine; I probably should have known I wouldn't be the only one inspired by it. *g*Summary: The team gets drunk and compares scars.
It’s the little things that make it hard to forget you’re on another planet. When he tuned out the conversation inside the jumper, Rodney could hear the strange chirping of an insect—what he thought was probably an insect—that always reminded him of a car alarm activating, and the breeze coming through the open door of the jumper smelled sweet in a very distinctive way he’d never experienced before coming to the mainland after dark. Katie told him it was the combined scents of two flowering plants releasing clouds of phenols to attract nocturnal insects, which was something he felt rather smug about having listened closely enough to remember.
His first night on the mainland, Rodney had sneezed nonstop for five minutes, a reaction he now was forced to admit might have been at least partially psychosomatic. Since then, he’d come to almost welcome the smell of the night air here, and the incessant chirping of the insects—in fact, a more sentimental person might even describe it as an attachment. He did welcome his team’s occasional trips here to engage in “R&R,” as the Colonel generously described evenings spent drinking or playing cards in the jumper, parked just outside the Athosian settlement.
“Should one of us stay sober?” Rodney tapped his fingers on the arm of his seat and eyed the ceramic flagon with longing. “You know, just in case?”
“I’m sober, Rodney,” John said with a lazy grin. Rodney supposed he had actually never seen John drunk before, so he wasn’t sure what to look for. At the moment, John was slouched in his seat, leg thrown over the arm, a cup of whatever Teyla had called this Athosian brew dangling from one hand. It was possible, now that Rodney thought about it, that it was John’s first cup. Ronon, on the other hand...
“You worry too much, McKay,” Ronon slurred. He slapped Rodney heartily on the shoulder and gave him a brilliant, gleaming smile. Rodney had to blink against it.
“How did you ever manage to keep your teeth so perfect and white all that time you were on the run? Are you some kind of genetic superman, or are you just really inventive with methods of dental hygiene?”
There was a long pause, and Ronon exploded into laughter.
“Ah, thank you,” Rodney said, wiping droplets of spit from his face as Ronon nearly fell out of his seat. “I have a feeling it’s option B. Right, I need another one...”
Teyla leaned over and, with exaggerated formality, poured him more of the spicy golden liquid. She lowered herself to one knee and offered him the cup with both hands. “May we have more days together than apart, my friend.”
Rodney hesitated as he reached for the cup. “You didn’t just propose to me or anything, did you? Because, honestly, Teyla, you know I like you very much, but...”
Ronon and Teyla were both laughing now, so hard it looked like they might rupture something vital. They never seemed to find him this funny when they were sober, Rodney realized, frowning. John smiled indulgently at the three of them and took another sip; Rodney sipped along with him, savoring the heat that slid down his throat and spread through his chest. “Teyla, what did you say this is brewed from again?”
“I didn’t,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And believe me when I tell you, Doctor, you do not want to know.”
“Hm.” Rodney looked down into his cup and swirled it around, then smelled it. “If only we had replicators like on Star Trek. Then we could indulge in this stuff at our leisure, without having to worry about the step where it’s fermented in a goat’s bladder with rat salivary enzymes, or whatever it is you’re not telling me.”
“Yeah, now replicators would be cool,” John said, pointing for emphasis. “Why haven’t you built one of those yet, Rodney?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Not even the Ancients could have managed that, Colonel.”
“Yeah, but you’re smarter than they were, remember?”
Rodney stiffened. He looked away from John and finished the rest of his cup in three long swallows, as he tried to think of a sufficiently biting response. Teyla spoke up quickly, saving him the trouble.
“Colonel, what is that scar, there?” Teyla pointed at the leg John was dangling over the arm of his seat. His pant leg had ridden up until a narrow strip of skin was showing above his boot, revealing a small, jagged scar.
“Oh, that? Old skateboarding injury. Twelve years old, went off the sidewalk and down a hill. That’s from the piece of broken glass that caught me on the way down. Needed five stitches.”
“That what they call a scar where you come from, Sheppard?” Ronon stood abruptly, swaying a bit before approaching the front of the jumper and plunking one foot down on the control console.
“Careful!” John said, quickly sitting up.
Ronon seemed not to be listening. He rolled up his pant leg to reveal a long line of puckered, scarred skin, extending upward from inside his boot. “That goes past my knee,” he said proudly.
Rodney stumbled across the jumper and steadied himself with a hand on Teyla’s shoulder. “What the hell is that from?”
“Knife fight.” Ronon grinned at each of them in turn. “Over a gun.”
“Oh, now that makes perfect sense.” Rodney folded his arms over his chest. “And who came out of that one with the fair gun at his side, hm?”
Ronon pulled his gun from his holster, twirled it a few times, then reholstered it. “Been with her ever since.”
“It must have been a very impressive wound, Ronon.” Teyla smiled sweetly and took another swig. “And for such a noble cause.”
“It was worth it.” Ronon said as they all fell back into their seats. Once Ronon had made himself comfortable, he put his feet up on Rodney’s lap.
“Ow, hello, do you mind?” Rodney made a halfhearted attempt to push them away, but they didn’t even budge.
“What about you, Teyla?” Ronon asked, digging his boots in deeper.
“I...do have a scar that is...also impressive. But I am afraid you will simply have to take my word for it.”
“Oh, now, come on. We showed you ours,” John said with a smirk.
Teyla glanced down at her BDU pants. “Perhaps another time.”
Rodney rubbed absently at his forearm, his face suddenly burning hot. He hoped to God no one would try to make him go next. “So, uh, Ronon. What about that one?”
Ronon regarded him through half-closed eyes. “Hmm?”
“There.” Rodney pointed at a faint patch of scarred skin on Ronon’s left arm.
Ronon twisted his arm and craned his head to look at it, rubbing it gently with his finger. “Oh. It was a tattoo.”
John spoke up. “You mean like one of those deals where you get drunk, get your girlfriend’s name tattooed on your chest, and then find out a week later that she’s sleeping with your CO, so then you have to go and spend all your savings on laser surgery to get rid of a tattoo that’s barely even healed?”
Rodney took a moment to join everyone else in staring silently at John.
“What?” John sat up straighter in his seat. “I know a guy that happened to.”
Rodney snickered and Teyla smiled as she poured herself another cup, but Ronon was still stroking the patch of skin on his arm thoughtfully. “It was a ship I served on, back on Sateda. The Ameceta.”
“What, you mean like a spaceship?” Rodney asked.
“No, a ship that floats on the ocean.”
“You were in the Navy?” John did a bad job of keeping the disappointment out of his voice. “How the hell did I not know that?”
“We don’t—didn’t—divide our military like you do,” Ronon said. “All soldiers served on land and at sea.”
“Huh.” Rodney sat back and gave up trying to get Ronon’s feet off of him. “So what happened? Why’d you have it removed?”
“Rodney...” John’s voice was full of quiet warning, but Ronon began to speak before Rodney had a chance to defend himself.
“We were on a mission to deliver bombs—bombs we weren’t supposed to have. They’d been outlawed by the Council, but the military used them anyway. If anyone found out, though...” Ronon shifted in his chair and downed the rest of his drink. “So no one knew we were out there.”
“Must have been some bombs,” John said, eyebrows raised.
“Not as powerful as yours, but powerful enough. Better than anything else we had to work with against the Wraith. But they were outlawed for a reason—they’d never been reliable or safe to transport. And anyone on that mission who didn’t believe that learned it the hard way.”
“One of them detonated.”
At the sound of Rodney’s voice, Ronon looked up, but his mind was clearly elsewhere now. “Yeah. Ship sank like a stone. A lot of us were sleeping below deck when it happened. Some died in the explosion, most went down with the ship. Some got out and above deck just in time to see the whole ship go under.”
Rodney shuddered, staring down into his empty cup. He was trying to think of something good to say, when Teyla appeared in front of him and filled his cup, then Ronon’s. “How did you survive?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“We found stuff to hold on to and waited. One guy kept diving underwater, trying to find a radio or something he could rewire, but pretty soon the struxes started circling.”
“Struxes?” John was leaning forward now, cup forgotten.
“Really big fish that eat anything. Including people.”
“Yeah, we have those on Earth, too,” Rodney said. “So...what...did you fight them?”
“With what? We didn’t have weapons. We stuck together in groups of ten or twelve and tried to stay still, but...it was hard. No one wanted to be on the outside of the group. And then once someone was bleeding, it didn’t matter how still you were.” He paused to take a long drink, then continued. “They started taking us, one by one. When that blood was in the water, others came. Seemed like hundreds. It went on for... It went on for a long time. Two days and two nights.”
“Jesus.” Rodney glanced at John, who was staring at Ronon in what looked like openmouthed awe.
“They’d get close enough to look at you—cold eyes, nothing in them, no warmth, no life. Like the Wraith...” He paused for a second. “Yeah. Like that. And then when it came for you, you tried to fight—kicking, punching, screaming. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. When it did, it would go for the next guy. My taskmaster...” Ronon’s whole demeanor changed, became angrier. Rodney tried to sit very still. “I should have seen it then. But I was stupid. Just a kid.”
Rodney turned to John for clarification, but he looked just about as clueless as Rodney felt. Teyla was staring pointedly, strangely at Ronon. “How were you rescued?” she asked, this time in a loud, almost harsh voice.
Ronon seemed to snap out of it then, reverting to detached, monotone nonchalance. “A big fishing ship came. They used their rafts and nets to get us on board. They had to throw their haul overboard, and we nearly sank their ship with our weight, but they took us anyway. We sat there and watched the struxes go at the fish that had been dumped overboard. Looked like the whole ocean was boiling.”
John whispered something Rodney couldn’t hear, and Ronon answered. “Three hundred sixteen soldiers. Out of eleven hundred that went into the water.”
It was then that Ronon swung his feet down off of Rodney’s lap. Everything from Rodney’s knees down was numb now; he leaned forward and stomped his feet on the floor, as Ronon collapsed to sit cross-legged in front of the flagon and poured himself another generous drink. He held it up to the three of them with a small smile. “Never even delivered a single bomb,” he said, and then threw his head back and drained the whole cup.
John and Teyla seemed lost in their own thoughts. Even slightly drunk, Rodney was smart enough to know that anything he said was likely to somehow end up being perceived as inappropriate, so he kept his comments to himself and sipped his drink quietly and looked at Ronon, who was now sitting with his back to him. His dreads had slipped free of the band that tied them back, and they hung loose around the smooth skin of his shoulders. As it often did, Ronon’s astonishing youth struck Rodney suddenly—a feeling that made him want to bully anyone who would do him harm and come to the simultaneous, contradictory understanding that he was the one who would best be protected by Ronon. Rodney knew he had to be at least ten years older, but he’d endured only a tiny fraction of as much hardship and tragedy.
John swiveled his chair to look out the jumper’s front window. “No wonder you like coming to the mainland,” he said. “Being in Atlantis must get...”
“Disturbing,” Rodney said.
Ronon shrugged. “It’s okay. You can get used to almost anything.”
“You know, when I was your age...” Everyone looked at Rodney with interest as he began to speak, but he lost his train of thought and trailed off as he looked back at them. At his age what? He already had tenure? Universities in four different countries were still competing to recruit him? He’d left his home country and become completely estranged from his entire family by choice? He groped for what he could possibly have been about to say that had any relevance to what Ronon had just told them. Ronon, in particular, was looking at him with the same impatient yet earnest regard he showed when Rodney explained some aspect of wormhole physics for everyone’s benefit, like he wanted to hear what Rodney had to say in spite of himself.
“Nothing,” Rodney muttered at last. He stood and walked out the door of the jumper. Got to see a man about a horse, he thought, tripping over a branch as he searched for a sufficiently secluded tree. The car-alarm bugs were a cheerful orchestra playing all around him, and his feet buzzed with every step, as if the heels of Ronon’s boots were still planted in the meat of his thighs. He heard the low sound of Ronon’s voice coming from the jumper, followed by Teyla laughing in that way she almost never did, like something inside her had been knocked loose, a part of herself she normally kept tightly bound and hidden away. Rodney only heard her laugh like that when they were here together. He wondered, as he leaned against the tree, letting his forehead rest against the cool, smooth surface of the trunk, whether he, too, seemed different here than he did anywhere else.
Later, after John had brought them back to Atlantis and deposited him in his bed, Rodney stared at the framed degrees on his wall until he fell into a jerky, sweaty sleep that lasted until morning. He dreamed that all the people he cared most about were being taken, one by one, pulled beneath the surface of the ocean by creatures with lifeless eyes and hungry hands, and all he could do was watch as he lost the only home he’d known since childhood.