If At First You Don’t Succeed: Chapter 7
Feb. 4th, 2024 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 4565
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
“We’re leaving.”
Ronon had died with the words on his tongue, and they tumbled out of him even before he was fully aware of being back in the cylinder room. While his mind was roiling, the body he’d returned to was calm, as yet unaffected by grief and suffering, and he weathered the familiar wave of physical dissonance that always accompanied his reawakening. His emotions had quicker recall, though, and within seconds his heart had stuttered into a faster beat, as if rushing to match the frenetic pace of his thoughts.
Pivoting to face the others, he focused in on McKay, who was closest. At Ronon’s proclamation he’d paused, hands hovering over a tattered box that Ronon knew was empty. He met Ronon’s gaze with an expression of blank bafflement.
“What?”
“We’re leaving right now,” Ronon firmly repeated.
He moved with unyielding intent in McKay’s direction, planning to herd him toward the door, pulling Sheppard and Teyla into their wake as they went. If he could just get them moving without too many questions, he might be able to get them safely outside before the facility could kill them again.
But McKay stubbornly refused to budge. Crossing his arms over his chest, he simply surveyed Ronon with a narrowed gaze, irritation beginning to outweigh his confusion.
“We just got here!” he argued, before waving a hand to encompass their surroundings. “I mean, I haven’t immediately spotted anything of interest or apparent value in the room, but you could at least give me five minutes to rifle through drawers before shooing me out!”
“I don’t mean the room, I mean the facility,” Ronon corrected through gritted teeth. “I mean the entire damn planet. We’re leaving it. Now.”
When McKay just stared at him in defiant refusal, Ronon grabbed him by the collar. Lifting him so that his toes barely touched the floor, Ronon began dragging him toward the door.
“Hey!”
McKay twisted in his grip, slapping wildly over his shoulders at where Ronon had hold of him. Ronon had half a mind to carry him all the way to the surface, knowing Teyla and Sheppard would follow if he managed it, and that would get them all out of the facility. But then Sheppard called his name in the rare, sharp tone he only ever used when he felt Ronon had gone too far, and Ronon reluctantly let McKay go.
Tugging his jacket back in place across his shoulders, McKay scuttled over to stand near Sheppard, shooting Ronon a disgruntled glare as he did so. Sheppard gave McKay a cursory once over as he approached, seemingly more out of curiosity than concern—while McKay might have been a bit insulted by the unprompted manhandling, it was obvious that he’d come out of it unscathed. Teyla crossed the room to join Sheppard and McKay, the three a united front, and Sheppard pinned Ronon with an assessing stare.
“What’s going on with you?”
Ronon bit back a growl. They were wasting time, running against the clock he couldn’t hear but knew was ticking away somewhere.
“Time loop,” he said shortly. “We keep dying. We have no idea how to stop it. This whole place seems determined to see us dead, only we don’t stay that way, and I’m done. None of you remember any of it, but I do and that’s enough. So we’re leaving, and we’re doing it right now, and we aren’t coming back.”
Teyla exchanged a perplexed glance with Sheppard before giving Ronon a look of gentle concern. “Ronon, are you all right?”
He choked out a disbelieving rasp of a laugh. “No! No, I’m not okay! Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“What I didn’t hear was you apologizing for treating me like I was a misbehaving puppy!” McKay sniffed.
Ronon looked from his indignant scowl, to Sheppard’s disapproving and uncertain frown, to Teyla’s worried eyes. And in that moment he stopped caring about convincing anyone. He was going to get them out of the facility in the fastest way possible, and if that meant shooting first and answering questions later, then that’s what he would do.
Without another thought, faster than any of them could react, he had his blaster out and pointed at Sheppard.
In response to the motion, Teyla had immediately raised her own gun, though only halfway. She also kept it aimed just past Ronon, clearly not comfortable pointing it directly at him without understanding exactly what was going on. But she watched him calculatingly, and he knew she wouldn’t hesitate if he gave her a reason not to.
On Sheppard’s other side, McKay looked stunned, his wide eyes darting from Teyla to Ronon to Sheppard in a circuit. He had his hands wrapped around his own gun, but didn’t lift it, much to Ronon’s relief. Teyla he could trust not to fire unless she meant it—McKay, not so much. Given the way things had been going, Ronon suspected that any stray bullet from McKay’s hands would wind up being a kill shot, and he didn’t want to die this close to getting out. Especially if the loop decided to stop looping this time.
For his part, Sheppard hadn’t even flinched when Ronon had drawn on him. Instead he went very still, slowly raising his hands at his sides and watching Ronon with a calm, if wary, gaze.
“Ronon, buddy, whatever’s going on, I don’t think we need to resort to guns.”
“I will stun all of you and carry you to the Gate one by one if I have to!” Ronon snapped.
He didn’t miss the subtle release of tension in everyone’s bodies when he said ‘stun.’ Whether they’d believed that he might actually kill Sheppard because he wasn’t himself—or whether it was because they believed he was—was something he would have to dwell on another day. For now, he kept his hands steady, his voice even, and his gaze focused.
“But we are leaving right now,” he continued. “No negotiations, no objections, no ‘one last thing to check.’” He cut a glance McKay’s way at the last point, unsurprised when McKay looked faintly guilty.
Teyla had lowered her weapon as soon as it was clear Ronon wasn’t planning on using lethal force, and she studied him with a piercing gaze for a moment after he finished speaking. Ronon couldn’t completely read her expression from the corner of his eye, so he turned his head slightly to look at her dead on. She’d been the one who had gotten the others to trust him about the loop the first time, after all, so she was probably who he needed to convince this time, too. He held her gaze for a moment or two, and caught the minute shift that happened in her eyes just before she raised her chin slightly, as if making a decision.
“Very well,” she said. “We will leave.”
She looked at Sheppard, who returned her gaze for the span of a breath before he nodded once, decisively.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Yeah?” Ronon hesitantly lowered his blaster a few degrees, not sure he trusted things shifting in his favor so easily. He’d kind of expected that he would have to stun them all to get them out, that the loop or the facility or whatever it was would somehow make their exit as difficult as possible.
Sheppard gave a falsely nonchalant shrug. “Whatever happened—or not—you’re clearly not in any state to finish out the mission, so, yeah, we should head back. Figure it out. We can always come back if we decide it’s the right thing to do.”
He’d given McKay a meaningful look as he spoke, and Ronon swore he could see McKay physically swallow all the questions and complaints he had about the turn of events. Recalling how frustrated McKay had been over their failed searches, and how desperate he was to find something of value to show for all their efforts, Ronon almost felt bad for him. But if he had to choose between an alive but frustrated McKay or some Ancient device, it wasn’t a choice at all.
He easily nodded his acceptance. “Okay.”
With only the slightest hint of exaggerated deference, Sheppard gestured toward the door behind him. “We’ll go in front, right? So you can keep an eye on us, make sure nobody sneaks off.”
“And make sure our retreat is safe,” Teyla added, with a small but genuine smile. “As you always do.”
Ronon nodded again, curtly, itching to get out as fast as possible now that the team had agreed to leave. “Fine. Let’s go.”
He didn’t miss the look that passed between Sheppard and Teyla as they moved toward the door, though he wasn’t able to see their faces to read what was in it. They headed into the hall and back toward the entrance without any hesitation, though, so Ronon decided it didn’t matter.
McKay’s mood was much more obvious, though, his resentment at being forced to leave broadcast by the hunched way he stalked down the hall. Uncharacteristically, he wasn’t giving voice to any of his frustrations, but Ronon had no doubt that he was mentally drafting a list of grievances that he would share far and wide as soon as he was allowed. If they managed to make it back to Atlantis, Ronon decided he’d welcome it—just let McKay bitch for as long as he needed to until he felt better. They’d be alive, so why not.
In truth, he half believed that they wouldn’t actually be able to get out of the facility. He didn’t consider himself superstitious—or at least he hadn’t—but given the circumstances he wouldn’t have been surprised if the entrance staircase had collapsed on them as soon as they got on it. Or if they were attacked by the Wraith again. Or if the facility somehow turned into a maze with no exit, and they were stuck there forever.
Instead, the short trek back to the stairway landing was uneventful and straightforward. Nothing jumped out of the shadows, not a speck of dust fell from the ceiling, nobody so much as stumbled on a stray pebble.
Ronon stayed at the base of the stairs, guarding the landing doorway, until the others had made it fully outside. Then he walked sideways up the stairs after them, keeping watch behind him as he went, skin tingling with anticipation of something coming up after them as soon as his back was turned. But nothing did, and he emerged back into the same sunshine he’d left behind only a couple of hours—or maybe several days, now—before.
The others were waiting for him nearby, huddled together a couple of meters away from the front door. Ronon hesitated just outside it, hands aching for a door he could slam shut with a resounding finality. That not being possible, he did consider trying to at least get the door closed again. But he didn’t feel safe taking the time to make that happen—or, rather, asking McKay to do it—so he forced himself to turn and walk away. He didn’t look back, as doing so suddenly seemed as much an invitation for disaster as not looking over his shoulder while going up the stairs had before it.
Back under the cover of the trees, Ronon glanced up at the canopy, watching the light dance through the leaves and trying to shake the lingering dread that was following him. They’d made it out of the facility, just like he’d hoped to, but for some reason he didn’t feel any safer. If anything, the farther away from the facility they got the more uneasy he became. He tried to convince himself that it was just because he hadn’t actually expected them to be able to escape, and the surprise of making it out had left him unsettled.
He kept his eyes forward, following the others’ figures as they wound through the trees ahead of him, and tried to estimate how far they had left to reach the Gate. There wasn’t any clear path from the Gate to the facility, so getting from one to the other involved moving through the forest as best they could, going around obstacles they couldn’t go over and keeping each other in sight as they progressed. It wasn’t a long hike, or a difficult one, and given that they were moving with a bit more speed than they’d had on the way in, he expected it would take less than fifteen minutes to make it back.
He was looking up at the sky, calculating time by the position of the sun, when Teyla screamed.
For a second he was dazed, memories of deaths underground folding in on themselves under the bright midday sky. He blinked toward where he had last seen Teyla, heart thundering painfully in his chest, but she was no longer in sight. He instinctively broke into a jog and was about halfway to her position—McKay also closing in from nearer by—when Teyla popped back up into view.
Her piercing cries of fear and pain split the quiet of the forest as she turned in place, flailing her arms in a desperate attempt to free herself from her attackers.
Attached to various parts of her were animals of some kind, unlike any Ronon had ever seen before. Their torsos were small—Ronon could have easily held one in just one hand—and almost unnaturally round. Their heads were roughly the same shape and size as well, with pale, bulbous eyes that had no pupils and wide mouths with too many teeth. Head and torso were covered in green-tinted brown hair that gave off the impression of moss. Six gangly limbs—hair free and far too long for the bodies they were attached to—ended in human-like paws that gripped and pulled with surprising strength. Each toe was tipped with an inch-long, steeply curved claw that the animals used to devastating effect.
Despite Teyla’s struggles, they moved over her with no more difficulty than if she had been standing still. Everywhere they bit flesh was torn away, and everywhere they clawed deep gashes were opened. And the more she bled, the more of the animals appeared out of the trees.
McKay, who’d been closest to Teyla when she was attacked, reached her first. But he hovered a few meters away, looking horrified and uncertain about what to do. He’d pulled his gun out and had it raised, but he wouldn’t use it.
There was no way he could shoot all the animals off of Teyla, even if he’d had a steady hand. Given how many of the animals there were and how swiftly they moved around Teyla’s body, Ronon didn’t even think he could have managed many on-target shots himself. And it would have required him being willing to hit Teyla in the process, because there were no angles for shooting the animals that wouldn’t see Teyla as collateral damage.
From what Ronon could see of her body, though, that was no longer a concern. They’d transitioned into another type of rescue, and he didn’t think McKay had it in him to shoot Teyla in order to end her suffering. Not that either of them had much time to make that choice.
Within seconds of McKay having reached Teyla, she’d been swarmed and pulled to the ground again, her guttural screams replaced by the distressing sounds of ripping and tearing. Realizing that he was too late—that all of them would probably have always been too late—Ronon let out a despairing croak. His loping gait stuttered, but he swallowed down the rest of the cries that wanted to rise in him, bitter-tasting and sorrowful, and focused on getting to McKay.
McKay was slowly backing away from where Teyla had fallen, his face deathly pale and tinged with green, his entire body trembling. He was staring in transfixed horror at where she lay under a writhing mass of the animals when another group of them descended on him from the trees above his head.
He didn’t scream. He never got the chance.
As soon as the animals landed on him, one immediately went for his throat in a move that was too practiced not to have been deliberate. Blood spewed from the wound instantly, bright red spurting across the leaf-litter as McKay arched in pain. Instinctively, he grabbed for the animal biting him, actually managing to get hold of it and fling it away from him. But the damage had already been done. Ronon watched as McKay let out a gurgling gasp, eyes wide and glassy, and fell to his knees, his entire front covered in a torrent of blood.
Ronon didn’t hesitate, knowing what he had to do, the only thing that could be done. Pausing so that he could aim—he wanted it to be clean, wanted it to be merciful—he leveled his blaster at McKay. McKay met his gaze for a second, calm and accepting, and then closed his eyes.
Taking a breath around an aching heart, Ronon fired.
Startled by the sound of the blast, the animals scattered, releasing deep, rhythmic grunts that their small bodies didn’t look capable of producing. But they recovered quickly, too quickly for Ronon to reach McKay before they converged on his corpse again.
Not that there had really been any hope of recovering McKay or Teyla, even if Ronon had been able to risk stopping. And stopping was something he could no longer risk. Because he could hear the shushing rustle of movement in the canopy surrounding him and knew it was headed in his direction.
He was being stalked, and he had to keep moving until he found shelter or a defensible position. Momentarily, he thought about heading back toward the facility, as it was the only building they knew of on the planet. He wasn’t sure if he’d have enough time to dial the Gate before the animals were on him—and he wouldn’t go through if they were close enough to follow, anyway—so the facility might be the only refuge he had. Defending one doorway against an onslaught was much more feasible than surviving out in the open, if those were his only two choices.
But just as he was about to make a decision, he heard gunfire off to his left: Sheppard.
In the chaos, Ronon had lost sight of him. But it was apparent that Sheppard had had to make a run for it, too. Since he’d been out in front, he might have actually been the first of them to be attacked.
Without breaking stride, Ronon cut in the direction of the gunfire. The shots were coming in sporadic bursts, somehow giving off the impression of a frantic battle despite not being answered by return fire. There was a pause, then a few more pops, much nearer now, before he heard Sheppard let out a strangled yelp.
Ronon broke through the trees to find Sheppard attempting to fight off three of the animals. His gun was lying on the forest floor a few feet away from him, having been abandoned out of close-quarters necessity in favor of his knife.
As Ronon got closer, he saw Sheppard get a good slice across the back of one of the animals, which had latched onto his leg. The animal let out a thrumming hoot and let go, scurrying a safe distance away and curling in on itself. It continued hooting but Sheppard ignored it as he struggled with its two companions, who were on his back.
“Ronon!”
Having caught sight of Ronon, Sheppard’s cut-off cry was part frustration, part fear. Ronon ran to his side and ripped one of the animals off him without thought, the claws that had been dug into Sheppard taking bits of him with them. Sheppard hissed as the flesh of his back was torn open, body momentarily going tense, but otherwise didn’t react.
Shooting the animal out of his own hand, Ronon then had Sheppard hold still so he could take care of the one that was left. Before it could scurry to another area of Sheppard’s body, Ronon grabbed it around its middle. It hissed at him, mouth wide and red with Sheppard’s blood, and that’s where Ronon aimed before firing. Its now headless body fell limply from Sheppard’s back and hit the ground with a muffled thud, and Ronon kicked it away into the shadows under the trees. Its blood—a disconcertingly bright orange—had coated his hand, and Ronon wiped it off on his pant leg as he caught his breath.
Sheppard was doing the same, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily. He was bleeding pretty badly from several wounds—Ronon could actually see blood dripping onto the ground from his hunched body—but he didn’t seem to be any imminent danger of dying. If anything, he looked sour.
“No dangerous animals, my ass,” he wheezed. “I’m gonna kill Rodney.”
Ronon swallowed down a wave of nausea and jerkily straightened up.
Sheppard didn’t know.
He must’ve had to run before he saw the outcomes of Teyla’s and McKay’s attacks—if he even knew they’d been attacked at all. With how fast it had all happened and how far away Sheppard had gotten from the others, there was every chance he thought he’d been the only one in danger.
So he didn’t know that Teyla had been torn apart, was even now being eaten. He didn’t know what Ronon had chosen to do for McKay. What he’d had to do.
But Sheppard must have sensed something in his demeanor, because he suddenly straightened as well and turned a searching gaze on Ronon’s face. Still breathing a bit heavily, one arm pressed against his ribs, he asked without asking, and Ronon answered without saying anything.
As Sheppard’s eyes went vacant and dipped away from his, Ronon silently cursed the Ancients, the facility, the planet, anything and everything he could think of. When he got to the animals that had attacked them—which were surprisingly far down the list; he had a lot of things to hate—his gaze was drawn to the one Sheppard had only wounded.
It was still hooting pathetically, crouched in a ball nearby and watching them with an oddly judgmental gaze. Overcome with disgust and rage, Ronon strode toward it, raising his blaster as he went. But before he could fire, he became aware of a change in the animal’s hoots. Or at least in the way they sounded, as if they were picking up an echo.
A split second later, he realized it was because they were being repeated. By other animals. In the trees surrounding them.
The hooting grew in volume, gained various pitches, started getting faster. Ronon walked backwards, eyes scanning the trees, heart racing, until he was back to back with Sheppard. He remembered how the animals had fallen from the treetops onto McKay and couldn’t bring himself to look directly up to see just how many branches he was currently under.
“Sheppard?”
“Yeah?”
“Facility or Gate?”
There was a pause, then, “Gate.”
Ronon nodded, even though Sheppard couldn’t see him. “One.”
“Two.”
“Three!”
He took off at a sprint, hearing Sheppard mostly keeping pace behind him. The peaceful stroll they’d taken to get to the facility had been much more meandering, but Ronon attempted as best he could an urgent, direct route to the Gate, vaulting over fallen trees and tearing through thick patches of undergrowth rather than waste time going around them.
His lungs were aching, blood burning through his body, skin stinging from the cuts branches and briars had left behind. But he was sure that they were close, and if they could get there without stopping, they might actually have a chance.
And they might have. Right up until they didn’t.
Even though he’d been in front, the animals took him out first. Because the sun was partially behind him—a bit off to his right as he ran—he actually saw them as they came. When they started dropping from the trees, he was able to watch their soaring shadows descend upon his own, like story figures cast on a wall by candlelight.
The feel of their teeth and claws sinking into him was all too real, though. The pain was fire and ice, the smell of his own blood brutally, comfortingly familiar. Here was something to fight, the thing he was best at, where he usually won.
So with a ferocity that grief refused to temper, he tore himself apart.
Every animal that was ripped away took part of his body with it. Bites became ragged holes, claws created gaping gouges, but Ronon was heedless to them all. The only thing he was focused on was killing as many of the animals as he could, a kind of penance and punishment, though whether for the animals or himself, he wasn’t sure. If he died in the process, he supposed it could be for both.
He heard Sheppard shouting, but couldn’t tell if he was shouting out help or shouting for it. Either way, Ronon was no longer capable of responding. One of the animals had gotten him by the neck, just above his collarbone, and he no longer had a voice.
He knew he’d been weakening for some time, could feel it in the shakiness of his limbs and looseness of his grip. But now, as he struggled with the animal gnawing its way through his windpipe, he knew he was past the point of no return. Blood from the wound was pouring into his throat, warm and thick, and when he hunched over to cough it out, the metallic tang coated his tongue.
He stayed in that position, the animal still clamped onto his neck, and stared down at the pool of red growing below him, watching as the flow wavered between bright and dark. What air that made it into his lungs tasted of loam and copper, and he could hear the wet rasping of his own breathing over the pleased hums the animals were making.
Distantly, he could sense more of them jumping onto him now that he was still. He dropped onto his hands and knees, less from the actual weight of them and more from the sense of that weight. He was wounded and outnumbered, and he knew that it was going to kill him.
Part of him wanted to look for Sheppard, to have one last glimpse at whether he’d been able to get away. But even if he’d had the energy to turn his body, there were so many animals on and around him by that point that Ronon didn’t think he’d be able to see anything anyway. Then, just before he collapsed entirely, one went for his eyes, and he lost his chance to see anything at all.
As his mind pulled itself away from the pain and drifted, he idly wished there had been someone around who could have given him his own merciful end. If it was inevitable that he’d die, he could have at least been spared a long death. He didn’t think it was selfish to want that.
Maybe next time, came the dark, hollow thought. Maybe next time.
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 4565
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
“We’re leaving.”
Ronon had died with the words on his tongue, and they tumbled out of him even before he was fully aware of being back in the cylinder room. While his mind was roiling, the body he’d returned to was calm, as yet unaffected by grief and suffering, and he weathered the familiar wave of physical dissonance that always accompanied his reawakening. His emotions had quicker recall, though, and within seconds his heart had stuttered into a faster beat, as if rushing to match the frenetic pace of his thoughts.
Pivoting to face the others, he focused in on McKay, who was closest. At Ronon’s proclamation he’d paused, hands hovering over a tattered box that Ronon knew was empty. He met Ronon’s gaze with an expression of blank bafflement.
“What?”
“We’re leaving right now,” Ronon firmly repeated.
He moved with unyielding intent in McKay’s direction, planning to herd him toward the door, pulling Sheppard and Teyla into their wake as they went. If he could just get them moving without too many questions, he might be able to get them safely outside before the facility could kill them again.
But McKay stubbornly refused to budge. Crossing his arms over his chest, he simply surveyed Ronon with a narrowed gaze, irritation beginning to outweigh his confusion.
“We just got here!” he argued, before waving a hand to encompass their surroundings. “I mean, I haven’t immediately spotted anything of interest or apparent value in the room, but you could at least give me five minutes to rifle through drawers before shooing me out!”
“I don’t mean the room, I mean the facility,” Ronon corrected through gritted teeth. “I mean the entire damn planet. We’re leaving it. Now.”
When McKay just stared at him in defiant refusal, Ronon grabbed him by the collar. Lifting him so that his toes barely touched the floor, Ronon began dragging him toward the door.
“Hey!”
McKay twisted in his grip, slapping wildly over his shoulders at where Ronon had hold of him. Ronon had half a mind to carry him all the way to the surface, knowing Teyla and Sheppard would follow if he managed it, and that would get them all out of the facility. But then Sheppard called his name in the rare, sharp tone he only ever used when he felt Ronon had gone too far, and Ronon reluctantly let McKay go.
Tugging his jacket back in place across his shoulders, McKay scuttled over to stand near Sheppard, shooting Ronon a disgruntled glare as he did so. Sheppard gave McKay a cursory once over as he approached, seemingly more out of curiosity than concern—while McKay might have been a bit insulted by the unprompted manhandling, it was obvious that he’d come out of it unscathed. Teyla crossed the room to join Sheppard and McKay, the three a united front, and Sheppard pinned Ronon with an assessing stare.
“What’s going on with you?”
Ronon bit back a growl. They were wasting time, running against the clock he couldn’t hear but knew was ticking away somewhere.
“Time loop,” he said shortly. “We keep dying. We have no idea how to stop it. This whole place seems determined to see us dead, only we don’t stay that way, and I’m done. None of you remember any of it, but I do and that’s enough. So we’re leaving, and we’re doing it right now, and we aren’t coming back.”
Teyla exchanged a perplexed glance with Sheppard before giving Ronon a look of gentle concern. “Ronon, are you all right?”
He choked out a disbelieving rasp of a laugh. “No! No, I’m not okay! Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“What I didn’t hear was you apologizing for treating me like I was a misbehaving puppy!” McKay sniffed.
Ronon looked from his indignant scowl, to Sheppard’s disapproving and uncertain frown, to Teyla’s worried eyes. And in that moment he stopped caring about convincing anyone. He was going to get them out of the facility in the fastest way possible, and if that meant shooting first and answering questions later, then that’s what he would do.
Without another thought, faster than any of them could react, he had his blaster out and pointed at Sheppard.
In response to the motion, Teyla had immediately raised her own gun, though only halfway. She also kept it aimed just past Ronon, clearly not comfortable pointing it directly at him without understanding exactly what was going on. But she watched him calculatingly, and he knew she wouldn’t hesitate if he gave her a reason not to.
On Sheppard’s other side, McKay looked stunned, his wide eyes darting from Teyla to Ronon to Sheppard in a circuit. He had his hands wrapped around his own gun, but didn’t lift it, much to Ronon’s relief. Teyla he could trust not to fire unless she meant it—McKay, not so much. Given the way things had been going, Ronon suspected that any stray bullet from McKay’s hands would wind up being a kill shot, and he didn’t want to die this close to getting out. Especially if the loop decided to stop looping this time.
For his part, Sheppard hadn’t even flinched when Ronon had drawn on him. Instead he went very still, slowly raising his hands at his sides and watching Ronon with a calm, if wary, gaze.
“Ronon, buddy, whatever’s going on, I don’t think we need to resort to guns.”
“I will stun all of you and carry you to the Gate one by one if I have to!” Ronon snapped.
He didn’t miss the subtle release of tension in everyone’s bodies when he said ‘stun.’ Whether they’d believed that he might actually kill Sheppard because he wasn’t himself—or whether it was because they believed he was—was something he would have to dwell on another day. For now, he kept his hands steady, his voice even, and his gaze focused.
“But we are leaving right now,” he continued. “No negotiations, no objections, no ‘one last thing to check.’” He cut a glance McKay’s way at the last point, unsurprised when McKay looked faintly guilty.
Teyla had lowered her weapon as soon as it was clear Ronon wasn’t planning on using lethal force, and she studied him with a piercing gaze for a moment after he finished speaking. Ronon couldn’t completely read her expression from the corner of his eye, so he turned his head slightly to look at her dead on. She’d been the one who had gotten the others to trust him about the loop the first time, after all, so she was probably who he needed to convince this time, too. He held her gaze for a moment or two, and caught the minute shift that happened in her eyes just before she raised her chin slightly, as if making a decision.
“Very well,” she said. “We will leave.”
She looked at Sheppard, who returned her gaze for the span of a breath before he nodded once, decisively.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Yeah?” Ronon hesitantly lowered his blaster a few degrees, not sure he trusted things shifting in his favor so easily. He’d kind of expected that he would have to stun them all to get them out, that the loop or the facility or whatever it was would somehow make their exit as difficult as possible.
Sheppard gave a falsely nonchalant shrug. “Whatever happened—or not—you’re clearly not in any state to finish out the mission, so, yeah, we should head back. Figure it out. We can always come back if we decide it’s the right thing to do.”
He’d given McKay a meaningful look as he spoke, and Ronon swore he could see McKay physically swallow all the questions and complaints he had about the turn of events. Recalling how frustrated McKay had been over their failed searches, and how desperate he was to find something of value to show for all their efforts, Ronon almost felt bad for him. But if he had to choose between an alive but frustrated McKay or some Ancient device, it wasn’t a choice at all.
He easily nodded his acceptance. “Okay.”
With only the slightest hint of exaggerated deference, Sheppard gestured toward the door behind him. “We’ll go in front, right? So you can keep an eye on us, make sure nobody sneaks off.”
“And make sure our retreat is safe,” Teyla added, with a small but genuine smile. “As you always do.”
Ronon nodded again, curtly, itching to get out as fast as possible now that the team had agreed to leave. “Fine. Let’s go.”
He didn’t miss the look that passed between Sheppard and Teyla as they moved toward the door, though he wasn’t able to see their faces to read what was in it. They headed into the hall and back toward the entrance without any hesitation, though, so Ronon decided it didn’t matter.
McKay’s mood was much more obvious, though, his resentment at being forced to leave broadcast by the hunched way he stalked down the hall. Uncharacteristically, he wasn’t giving voice to any of his frustrations, but Ronon had no doubt that he was mentally drafting a list of grievances that he would share far and wide as soon as he was allowed. If they managed to make it back to Atlantis, Ronon decided he’d welcome it—just let McKay bitch for as long as he needed to until he felt better. They’d be alive, so why not.
In truth, he half believed that they wouldn’t actually be able to get out of the facility. He didn’t consider himself superstitious—or at least he hadn’t—but given the circumstances he wouldn’t have been surprised if the entrance staircase had collapsed on them as soon as they got on it. Or if they were attacked by the Wraith again. Or if the facility somehow turned into a maze with no exit, and they were stuck there forever.
Instead, the short trek back to the stairway landing was uneventful and straightforward. Nothing jumped out of the shadows, not a speck of dust fell from the ceiling, nobody so much as stumbled on a stray pebble.
Ronon stayed at the base of the stairs, guarding the landing doorway, until the others had made it fully outside. Then he walked sideways up the stairs after them, keeping watch behind him as he went, skin tingling with anticipation of something coming up after them as soon as his back was turned. But nothing did, and he emerged back into the same sunshine he’d left behind only a couple of hours—or maybe several days, now—before.
The others were waiting for him nearby, huddled together a couple of meters away from the front door. Ronon hesitated just outside it, hands aching for a door he could slam shut with a resounding finality. That not being possible, he did consider trying to at least get the door closed again. But he didn’t feel safe taking the time to make that happen—or, rather, asking McKay to do it—so he forced himself to turn and walk away. He didn’t look back, as doing so suddenly seemed as much an invitation for disaster as not looking over his shoulder while going up the stairs had before it.
Back under the cover of the trees, Ronon glanced up at the canopy, watching the light dance through the leaves and trying to shake the lingering dread that was following him. They’d made it out of the facility, just like he’d hoped to, but for some reason he didn’t feel any safer. If anything, the farther away from the facility they got the more uneasy he became. He tried to convince himself that it was just because he hadn’t actually expected them to be able to escape, and the surprise of making it out had left him unsettled.
He kept his eyes forward, following the others’ figures as they wound through the trees ahead of him, and tried to estimate how far they had left to reach the Gate. There wasn’t any clear path from the Gate to the facility, so getting from one to the other involved moving through the forest as best they could, going around obstacles they couldn’t go over and keeping each other in sight as they progressed. It wasn’t a long hike, or a difficult one, and given that they were moving with a bit more speed than they’d had on the way in, he expected it would take less than fifteen minutes to make it back.
He was looking up at the sky, calculating time by the position of the sun, when Teyla screamed.
For a second he was dazed, memories of deaths underground folding in on themselves under the bright midday sky. He blinked toward where he had last seen Teyla, heart thundering painfully in his chest, but she was no longer in sight. He instinctively broke into a jog and was about halfway to her position—McKay also closing in from nearer by—when Teyla popped back up into view.
Her piercing cries of fear and pain split the quiet of the forest as she turned in place, flailing her arms in a desperate attempt to free herself from her attackers.
Attached to various parts of her were animals of some kind, unlike any Ronon had ever seen before. Their torsos were small—Ronon could have easily held one in just one hand—and almost unnaturally round. Their heads were roughly the same shape and size as well, with pale, bulbous eyes that had no pupils and wide mouths with too many teeth. Head and torso were covered in green-tinted brown hair that gave off the impression of moss. Six gangly limbs—hair free and far too long for the bodies they were attached to—ended in human-like paws that gripped and pulled with surprising strength. Each toe was tipped with an inch-long, steeply curved claw that the animals used to devastating effect.
Despite Teyla’s struggles, they moved over her with no more difficulty than if she had been standing still. Everywhere they bit flesh was torn away, and everywhere they clawed deep gashes were opened. And the more she bled, the more of the animals appeared out of the trees.
McKay, who’d been closest to Teyla when she was attacked, reached her first. But he hovered a few meters away, looking horrified and uncertain about what to do. He’d pulled his gun out and had it raised, but he wouldn’t use it.
There was no way he could shoot all the animals off of Teyla, even if he’d had a steady hand. Given how many of the animals there were and how swiftly they moved around Teyla’s body, Ronon didn’t even think he could have managed many on-target shots himself. And it would have required him being willing to hit Teyla in the process, because there were no angles for shooting the animals that wouldn’t see Teyla as collateral damage.
From what Ronon could see of her body, though, that was no longer a concern. They’d transitioned into another type of rescue, and he didn’t think McKay had it in him to shoot Teyla in order to end her suffering. Not that either of them had much time to make that choice.
Within seconds of McKay having reached Teyla, she’d been swarmed and pulled to the ground again, her guttural screams replaced by the distressing sounds of ripping and tearing. Realizing that he was too late—that all of them would probably have always been too late—Ronon let out a despairing croak. His loping gait stuttered, but he swallowed down the rest of the cries that wanted to rise in him, bitter-tasting and sorrowful, and focused on getting to McKay.
McKay was slowly backing away from where Teyla had fallen, his face deathly pale and tinged with green, his entire body trembling. He was staring in transfixed horror at where she lay under a writhing mass of the animals when another group of them descended on him from the trees above his head.
He didn’t scream. He never got the chance.
As soon as the animals landed on him, one immediately went for his throat in a move that was too practiced not to have been deliberate. Blood spewed from the wound instantly, bright red spurting across the leaf-litter as McKay arched in pain. Instinctively, he grabbed for the animal biting him, actually managing to get hold of it and fling it away from him. But the damage had already been done. Ronon watched as McKay let out a gurgling gasp, eyes wide and glassy, and fell to his knees, his entire front covered in a torrent of blood.
Ronon didn’t hesitate, knowing what he had to do, the only thing that could be done. Pausing so that he could aim—he wanted it to be clean, wanted it to be merciful—he leveled his blaster at McKay. McKay met his gaze for a second, calm and accepting, and then closed his eyes.
Taking a breath around an aching heart, Ronon fired.
Startled by the sound of the blast, the animals scattered, releasing deep, rhythmic grunts that their small bodies didn’t look capable of producing. But they recovered quickly, too quickly for Ronon to reach McKay before they converged on his corpse again.
Not that there had really been any hope of recovering McKay or Teyla, even if Ronon had been able to risk stopping. And stopping was something he could no longer risk. Because he could hear the shushing rustle of movement in the canopy surrounding him and knew it was headed in his direction.
He was being stalked, and he had to keep moving until he found shelter or a defensible position. Momentarily, he thought about heading back toward the facility, as it was the only building they knew of on the planet. He wasn’t sure if he’d have enough time to dial the Gate before the animals were on him—and he wouldn’t go through if they were close enough to follow, anyway—so the facility might be the only refuge he had. Defending one doorway against an onslaught was much more feasible than surviving out in the open, if those were his only two choices.
But just as he was about to make a decision, he heard gunfire off to his left: Sheppard.
In the chaos, Ronon had lost sight of him. But it was apparent that Sheppard had had to make a run for it, too. Since he’d been out in front, he might have actually been the first of them to be attacked.
Without breaking stride, Ronon cut in the direction of the gunfire. The shots were coming in sporadic bursts, somehow giving off the impression of a frantic battle despite not being answered by return fire. There was a pause, then a few more pops, much nearer now, before he heard Sheppard let out a strangled yelp.
Ronon broke through the trees to find Sheppard attempting to fight off three of the animals. His gun was lying on the forest floor a few feet away from him, having been abandoned out of close-quarters necessity in favor of his knife.
As Ronon got closer, he saw Sheppard get a good slice across the back of one of the animals, which had latched onto his leg. The animal let out a thrumming hoot and let go, scurrying a safe distance away and curling in on itself. It continued hooting but Sheppard ignored it as he struggled with its two companions, who were on his back.
“Ronon!”
Having caught sight of Ronon, Sheppard’s cut-off cry was part frustration, part fear. Ronon ran to his side and ripped one of the animals off him without thought, the claws that had been dug into Sheppard taking bits of him with them. Sheppard hissed as the flesh of his back was torn open, body momentarily going tense, but otherwise didn’t react.
Shooting the animal out of his own hand, Ronon then had Sheppard hold still so he could take care of the one that was left. Before it could scurry to another area of Sheppard’s body, Ronon grabbed it around its middle. It hissed at him, mouth wide and red with Sheppard’s blood, and that’s where Ronon aimed before firing. Its now headless body fell limply from Sheppard’s back and hit the ground with a muffled thud, and Ronon kicked it away into the shadows under the trees. Its blood—a disconcertingly bright orange—had coated his hand, and Ronon wiped it off on his pant leg as he caught his breath.
Sheppard was doing the same, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily. He was bleeding pretty badly from several wounds—Ronon could actually see blood dripping onto the ground from his hunched body—but he didn’t seem to be any imminent danger of dying. If anything, he looked sour.
“No dangerous animals, my ass,” he wheezed. “I’m gonna kill Rodney.”
Ronon swallowed down a wave of nausea and jerkily straightened up.
Sheppard didn’t know.
He must’ve had to run before he saw the outcomes of Teyla’s and McKay’s attacks—if he even knew they’d been attacked at all. With how fast it had all happened and how far away Sheppard had gotten from the others, there was every chance he thought he’d been the only one in danger.
So he didn’t know that Teyla had been torn apart, was even now being eaten. He didn’t know what Ronon had chosen to do for McKay. What he’d had to do.
But Sheppard must have sensed something in his demeanor, because he suddenly straightened as well and turned a searching gaze on Ronon’s face. Still breathing a bit heavily, one arm pressed against his ribs, he asked without asking, and Ronon answered without saying anything.
As Sheppard’s eyes went vacant and dipped away from his, Ronon silently cursed the Ancients, the facility, the planet, anything and everything he could think of. When he got to the animals that had attacked them—which were surprisingly far down the list; he had a lot of things to hate—his gaze was drawn to the one Sheppard had only wounded.
It was still hooting pathetically, crouched in a ball nearby and watching them with an oddly judgmental gaze. Overcome with disgust and rage, Ronon strode toward it, raising his blaster as he went. But before he could fire, he became aware of a change in the animal’s hoots. Or at least in the way they sounded, as if they were picking up an echo.
A split second later, he realized it was because they were being repeated. By other animals. In the trees surrounding them.
The hooting grew in volume, gained various pitches, started getting faster. Ronon walked backwards, eyes scanning the trees, heart racing, until he was back to back with Sheppard. He remembered how the animals had fallen from the treetops onto McKay and couldn’t bring himself to look directly up to see just how many branches he was currently under.
“Sheppard?”
“Yeah?”
“Facility or Gate?”
There was a pause, then, “Gate.”
Ronon nodded, even though Sheppard couldn’t see him. “One.”
“Two.”
“Three!”
He took off at a sprint, hearing Sheppard mostly keeping pace behind him. The peaceful stroll they’d taken to get to the facility had been much more meandering, but Ronon attempted as best he could an urgent, direct route to the Gate, vaulting over fallen trees and tearing through thick patches of undergrowth rather than waste time going around them.
His lungs were aching, blood burning through his body, skin stinging from the cuts branches and briars had left behind. But he was sure that they were close, and if they could get there without stopping, they might actually have a chance.
And they might have. Right up until they didn’t.
Even though he’d been in front, the animals took him out first. Because the sun was partially behind him—a bit off to his right as he ran—he actually saw them as they came. When they started dropping from the trees, he was able to watch their soaring shadows descend upon his own, like story figures cast on a wall by candlelight.
The feel of their teeth and claws sinking into him was all too real, though. The pain was fire and ice, the smell of his own blood brutally, comfortingly familiar. Here was something to fight, the thing he was best at, where he usually won.
So with a ferocity that grief refused to temper, he tore himself apart.
Every animal that was ripped away took part of his body with it. Bites became ragged holes, claws created gaping gouges, but Ronon was heedless to them all. The only thing he was focused on was killing as many of the animals as he could, a kind of penance and punishment, though whether for the animals or himself, he wasn’t sure. If he died in the process, he supposed it could be for both.
He heard Sheppard shouting, but couldn’t tell if he was shouting out help or shouting for it. Either way, Ronon was no longer capable of responding. One of the animals had gotten him by the neck, just above his collarbone, and he no longer had a voice.
He knew he’d been weakening for some time, could feel it in the shakiness of his limbs and looseness of his grip. But now, as he struggled with the animal gnawing its way through his windpipe, he knew he was past the point of no return. Blood from the wound was pouring into his throat, warm and thick, and when he hunched over to cough it out, the metallic tang coated his tongue.
He stayed in that position, the animal still clamped onto his neck, and stared down at the pool of red growing below him, watching as the flow wavered between bright and dark. What air that made it into his lungs tasted of loam and copper, and he could hear the wet rasping of his own breathing over the pleased hums the animals were making.
Distantly, he could sense more of them jumping onto him now that he was still. He dropped onto his hands and knees, less from the actual weight of them and more from the sense of that weight. He was wounded and outnumbered, and he knew that it was going to kill him.
Part of him wanted to look for Sheppard, to have one last glimpse at whether he’d been able to get away. But even if he’d had the energy to turn his body, there were so many animals on and around him by that point that Ronon didn’t think he’d be able to see anything anyway. Then, just before he collapsed entirely, one went for his eyes, and he lost his chance to see anything at all.
As his mind pulled itself away from the pain and drifted, he idly wished there had been someone around who could have given him his own merciful end. If it was inevitable that he’d die, he could have at least been spared a long death. He didn’t think it was selfish to want that.
Maybe next time, came the dark, hollow thought. Maybe next time.