sga_flashfic | Opening the Door to Strangers by ltlj; Exhaustion Challenge

Exhaustion Challenge

Title: Opening the Door to Strangers
Rating: PG, Team story, first season, no spoilers
Length: 1300 words
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, no money made.

Summary: Teyla is rescued by aliens.

Teyla blinked, coming back to consciousness to realize she was being carried head down over someone's shoulder. She tensed in alarm, then realized the black lumpy material that her nose was bumping against was a tac vest. The sky was gray and they were traveling in rocky country, down a steep ravine, and the cold ate into her skin. She took a guess. "Major?"

"Yeah." The voice came from somewhere past her left hip. "Hold on, we're nearly there."

Nearly there. She hoped he meant the stargate. He was breathing hard and she could feel his muscles shake with weariness, translated through the jolting motion as he climbed the rocks. She wanted to say, "I can walk," but her ankle was a knot of agony, sending shooting pains all up her right leg, and she knew she could not. She could not remember what had happened; it was all a haze made of the shock of ice and rocks and pain.

Then they were going up a steep incline, and she felt him strain to haul himself up and hold onto her weight, and for a moment she thought they would fall. Then hands caught her, caught him, hauling them both up into shelter.

Being lifted away from Sheppard made the blood rush from her head and for a moment these were alien hands, alien voices, and she grabbed at their arms, trying to fight, trying to pull herself away. But the moment of confusion faded and it was only Ford and Smith, alien still but her own nonetheless. Then a voice she knew well demanded, "Watch her head! Where the hell is the medical kit? Here," and she was handed into Dr. McKay's arms.

She sat up, dizzy and sick and cold through to the core, and saw their shelter was nothing but a slot or tunnel in the rock, open to the elements on both sides. Men in the gray Atlantean uniforms moved around her in a blur, and she remembered there was something important she must do. She tried to gather herself to stand, but the least weight on her bad ankle sent a bolt of pain through her and she cried out. Dr. McKay was there again suddenly, saying urgently, "No, no, don't move!"

Darkness came and went in her vision, then Sheppard leaned over her, ice crystals caught in his spiky black hair, and told her, "Hey, you stay with Rodney for a while, okay?"

She realized that she was in Dr. McKay's lap, which seemed undignified for both of them. But he opened his coat and tac vest and tucked her inside his jacket, her chilled body against the warmth of his solid chest, and she lost all will to protest.

She tried to remember when these strange people, these aliens from a place so far away it was hard to imagine, became a part of her home. When it became an odd notion that they might ever have been anything but a part of her home.

Her feet were in the Major's lap, and he was easing her boot off, and the argument was home, too.

"I don't need the manual, Rodney."

"I think she has a concussion!"

"Make sure that bump on her head isn't bleeding."

There was something about the stargate, and a terrible landslide, and a fall, but she was warm and cared for among these not-so-strange people, and the burden was not hers at the moment. She knew they would find a way.

Being rid of the too-tight boot was a small relief, and they pried her out of Dr. McKay's warmth long enough to make her take two pills and some water. "How do you feel?" Sheppard asked her, and she tried to reply, "Safe," but her teeth were chattering too hard.

She drifted after that, coming back to awareness only when Dr. McKay's place was taken by someone else, when she was carefully folded into another coat. She knew time was passing, because there was a whole succession of others. "We're having trouble getting through to the gate," Ford told her. "But it's going to be okay." "You okay, ma'am?" Stackhouse asked her. "She's only sort of conscious," Ramirez told someone else, "But her pupils look normal." She knew they were taking turns resting and keeping her warm. Preventing hypothermia, their word for the cold that settles deep in the body and kills unless driven out.

It was dark when she woke with her head clear, their little shelter lit by a battery lamp. She was cuddled against Smith's chest this time, and she could hear him speaking to someone on his headset. Her whole body ached, throbbing in time with her broken ankle, and she was aware of bumps and scrapes and a tender spot on the back of her head. She remembered the disaster, the shoals of shifting slate around the stargate. The sudden slide that displaced the gate, turning it sideways on its platform and shoving it into the rock, sending the DHD halfway down the ravine. Atlantis dialing in for their check-in, and the wash of the opening wormhole vaporizing the rock wedged across the gate, but triggering a landslide. Sheppard calling them on the radio through the still open wormhole, now buried under an unstable pile of loose rock and dirt, and telling them not to do that again. Then her slip on the icy stone and the fall. "We are not trapped?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," Smith said, and she heard how weary he sounded. "Just have to dig the damn thing out."

That was reassuring, but she was worried about the men working out there. The cold was growing worse with the darkness, and the little chemical heat packs and the shiny thin survival blankets were not very comforting. And there was nothing she could do to help.

Then there was noise below, more people coming into the shelter. She heard Ford say, "Major, we're almost done and if you fall down that ravine in the dark, it's just going to slow us down. McKay, could you--"

Then the Major, saying, "Damnit, Rodney--" and he was suddenly shoved in next to her.

Even through all the layers of clothing, she could feel the shivers that racked his body, and she could hear the bone-deep exhaustion slurring in his words. Dr. McKay spoke in exasperation, "Please, you haven't had a break all day, and believe it or not we're all perfectly capable of hauling rock without your supervision."

To settle the argument, Teyla pushed herself up and shifted over on top of Sheppard, and his arms went around her automatically, even while he glared up at Dr. McKay. If she could not help dig, she could at least do this. He said, dangerously, "Rodney--"

Dr. McKay waved his hands. "Don't be an idiot," he said, in a voice that did not conceal affection and worry as much as he thought, and went away.

Sheppard subsided reluctantly, muttering curses, most directed at Dr. McKay. She tugged open his tac vest and the jacket beneath, slid her arms inside and settled against him, sharing her warmth. He had little enough of his own, out there through the long icy day. He was all lean muscle and, she had always thought, bred for warmer climates. "You can rest," she told him, "And trust them, as I do."

"Yeah, well, I know," he admitted, and buried his face in her hair. His nose was frozen and very cold against her ear, but she didn't mind.

The next time Ford came back, it was to tell them the jumper was here to take them home.

end

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From:

vagablonde.livejournal.com

This is the first Teyla-centered fic I've read and it was a beautiful place to start! I love Teyla's reaction to the men trying to help her and feeling like they were home.

Beautiful!

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