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Back to Pt. 3
The bucket dropped from Rodney's suddenly nerveless fingers and bounced with a thump and a clatter of plastic on wood. “Oh... uh... um....”
Daniel pulled a hand from his pocket to point at Sheppard lying on his side, staring back at Jackson. “Is that....”
“It's not what it looks like,” Rodney cut in.
“Okay,” Daniel said, monumentally bewildered. “What, exactly, is it I'm seeing then?”
Rodney gulped. “I don't suppose 'it's really none of your business' is going to fly in this situation.”
“Not really, no.” Daniel's head swiveled between Rodney and Sheppard, the scene pretty damn blatant but the brain unable to buy it. Rodney knew, understood, and totally sympathized.
But rather than prolong the torment with a game of twenty questions, Daniel cut right to the chase. “McKay, what the hell is Colonel Sheppard doing here?”
“Hiding,” Sheppard supplied unhelpfully. Rodney gave him a hard glare that he hoped read loud and clear to please shut the hell up. Sheppard didn't even look at him. He did have the grace to snap his jaw shut when Daniel's gaze darted back to him.
“From what?” Daniel asked, which seemed a bit of an odd question, Rodney wasn't sure why.
No, strike that. It wasn't the question that was odd but that he was asking Sheppard, the man who was supposed to be flying over the cuckoo's nest and then some. And asking Sheppard as though it was a very pertinent question.
Finally unable to take the awkward suspense, Rodney surged forward, taking Daniel by the upper arm into the living room. Only to pause and turn back, pointing a rigid finger at Sheppard who was struggling to get out of bed.
“Stay.”
Sheppard's eyes narrowed darkly. “I'd really rather not, McKay, seeing as how this kind of concerns me.”
“Yes, it does, but I don't need you hovering and making Jackson nervous -”
“I'm not nervous,” Daniel said. “Just... confused.”
“-making Jackson confused as I explain the situation that you have now, officially, gotten us all into.”
Every muscle in Sheppard's overly slim body tightened, reminding Rodney briefly of a very agitated cat. “Hey! I told you to get rid of him.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “And I would have. But your body, it seems, has incredibly poor timing in purging itself. So this is your fault.”
“No, it isn't!”
“Yes, it is!”
“Gentlemen!” Daniel barked, both hands raised. “It's my fault, all right? I came in to say that I was leaving. Which, apparently, isn't going to happen within the next ten minutes so can I please just get an explanation and make a decision on whether or not I should be worried?”
Sheppard slunk back. “You made a promise, McKay.”
Again, Rodney rolled his eyes. “I'm not going to call anyone.” He pointed at Daniel. “And neither is he.
The muscles of the arm in Rodney's grip twitched when they tightened.
“Okay, now I'm starting to worry,” Daniel said.
Rodney gave him an impatient wave off then returned to pointing sternly at Sheppard. “Seriously, Sheppard. Stay. I'm not lugging your skinny but still heavy ass back in here because you were too stubborn to stay in bed and not do a face-plant in the floor. And I promise, we will speak loud enough so you know that we aren't calling anyone and turning you in.”
With that said, and before Sheppard could lodge another complaint, Rodney prodded Daniel out of the bedroom and into the living room. He didn't have a chance to shove him onto the couch when Jackson turned on him, seeming a little taller than Rodney had originally thought.
“McKay?” Jackson said in a tone similar to Sheppard's when he wanted Rodney to cut the bull and get right to the point. “What's going on?”
Sighing, Rodney waved at the couch. “Sit down. This... well, I don't know if it will take a while. Just- just sit down; you're making me nervous, and that's making it hard to think.”
Daniel obliged, his expression wary yet, at the same time, perfectly calm. Rodney envied that about... well, everyone, but right now envied it most about Jackson. They'd both been off-world, they'd both encountered and worked with a myriad of aliens, and yet Daniel walks in on an escaped mental patient without a crack in that calm to show for it whereas, had the roles been reversed, Rodney would have been stuttering and stammering until either knocked out or told to shut up with a gun in his face. And it wouldn't have been the first time, minus the escaped mental patient part.
Even now, at this very moment, it was a fight for Rodney not to pull his own hair out in panic. He accomplished this by wringing his hands together until they were red.
“Okay,” he said, pacing on the other side of the coffee table. “Okay, um... okay.”
“Got okay,” Daniel said. “Now on to why Sheppard is in your house rather than at the hospital.”
“Because he escaped,” Rodney blurted.
Daniel nodded. “Okay, good. He escaped. That's a start. Why?” Then his eyebrows slowly arched toward his hairline, his chin lifted, and his mouth formed an “O” of realization. “That's why you emailed me.”
Rodney could only nod instead of answer, his emotions being juggled between relief and the guilt of feeling as though he were selling out. Which he wasn't. As Daniel had said, it was his own fault that he was now involved, which may or may not be a good thing.
Oh please, please let it be a good thing, Rodney begged to no one in particular.
“So, what, that email was your plea for help?” Daniel asked.
Rodney balked, hoping Sheppard hadn't heard that but more than likely had. “What! No! Of course not. Well, not per se.” He stopped pacing and faced Daniel full on. He was pussy-footing, he knew it, and he wasn't going to get anywhere until Daniel knew the story front to back. “Okay, here's the thing. Sheppard showed up on my doorstep last night. Yes, he escaped from the hospital and hitchhiked all the way here. No, I haven't called anyone yet. Yes, I emailed you for help but in the form of advice. Oh, and I lied about the bruising. It isn't just all over Sheppard's arms; it's all over his body, with the added bonus of either a cracked or broken rib. He wasn't exactly clear on the details, but he's under the impression that he was being experimented on... which doesn't really matter in the long run. What does matter is that he's pretty beat up and – and....” He held up a finger for dramatic effect. “And the hospital has yet to call and tell me that Sheppard's up and vanished.”
Smiling smugly as though the last statement really did explain everything, Rodney placed his hands on his hips and waited for Daniel's response.
Daniel just stared at him, expressionless but steady, the stare of a man looking into another man and gathering enough intel in order to make a final judgment. It was making Rodney incredibly uncomfortable.
“Did I mention that I'm Sheppard's emergency contact?” Rodney said.
“So is General Landry,” Daniel countered. “Being his commander and all.”
Rodney dropped his hands limply to his sides. “Well... yes, but.... What are you getting at?”
“That maybe they contacted him first.”
“And, what, didn't feel the need to contact me as well?”
Again, Daniel stared, but it was a different stare, easy to read. And what Rodney was reading was a battle of consideration and explanation – digesting Rodney's logic while still poking at it for flaws and holes. After several seconds of this, an eyebrow lifted.
“Or Landry would have if they hadn't,” Daniel said, definitely digesting now, and that made Rodney breathe easier.
“So then you agree something is going on?” Rodney said. “I'm still not buying the experimentation theory myself. The rest has me concerned. Thus why I have yet to call Landry or anyone else myself. And you don't count. You were supposed to answer in an email not drop by.”
“I put the blame for that one on Dr. Lam,” Daniel said. “She can be pretty persuasive, especially when she threatens you with an early physical.”
“Mmm, yes, that's how Carson used to kick me out of the infirmary when he thought my reasons for coming in weren't good enough. As if potential food poisoning wasn't good enough. There was something wrong with that potato salad... well, no, there wasn't actually, but it had tasted funny. Dr. Keller's the same way....”
“Uh, McKay?” Daniel patiently interrupted.
Rodney stuttered to a halt and cleared his throat apologetically. “Anyways. I've no intention of alerting anyone to Sheppard's escape until I can be sure that a) he won't be sent back to that place and b) that hospital is put under investigation. And c) that they don't pin Sheppard's bruises on himself or drugs or being forced to treat him rough because he wasn't cooperating.”
Daniel dipped his head in agreement. “Sounds reasonable enough. Although the only way that's going to happen is if you call someone. Namely General Landry.”
Rodney scowled. “What are you, my personal little shoulder devil trying to convince me to join the dark side? Please. We call Landry, Landry will call the hospital, and the hospital pulls a lame yet still believable cover story out of their asses that sends Sheppard right back to where he'd escaped from.”
Daniel lips twisted ruefully. “That won't happen, McKay.”
“Yes, it will happen. In fact, that's probably why they haven't called. They're plotting out their cover story even as we speak.”
Daniel sighed. “Do you know how that makes you sound? Paranoid.”
Rodney resumed pacing, knowing it made him look just as paranoid as he sounded and not caring. He needed to move, to bleed off his agitation, irritation, and fear through movement before he exploded or imploded. Usually, in times of crisis when his back was against the wall and the choices were slim, there was something he could work on, fix: a device, ship, computer. Something he could focus on, have an answer to, and be able to breathe a sigh of relief over when it was finished.
He missed that, he really did, even with impending death included.
“I know, and I don't apologize for that. I'm not taking chances. They could get him back, decide he's a liability, kill him and blame it on suicide or some crap like that. There are too many possibilities, and... I just don't want to take any chances.”
Daniel released a sharp breath, massaging his face then jaw, tired yet thoughtful. “All right. No chances, which leaves us with few options.”
Rodney stopped and stared. “Us?”
“Well, it's not like I can just walk out of here and keep my mouth shut knowing what I know. And you're obviously in need of a little assistance.”
Rodney turned to him, his hands back to wringing. “Yes, help would be most appreciated because I have no freakin' idea what to do.”
“Which really isn't inspiring my confidence,” Daniel said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped loosely together. He looked at Rodney earnestly, asking for trust while knowing that it wasn't going to be easily given. “I really think you should call Landry, but that's your decision to make. Well, yours and Sheppard's. Mostly Sheppard's.”
“Who, may I remind you, isn't in his right mind,” Rodney said.
“That doesn't matter. McKay, he came to you because he obviously trusts you. Break that trust, and he'll not only run, when the SGC tries to use you to convince Sheppard to give himself up and come back home, he'll run even further. At the immediate moment it's more important that you maintain Sheppard's trust, make sure he feels safe, and try to convince him of what's best for him.”
Daniel then sat back, blue eyes dropping to the coffee table and looking at it without really seeing it. “It really doesn't make sense that the hospital hadn't contacted you.”
“Uh, it does if they're covering their asses,” Rodney argued.
Pursing his lips, Daniel shook his head. “No, it doesn't. And neither does Sheppard being able to escape.” He looked up at Rodney. “Did he have help?”
Rodney reared his head back indignantly. “What? How the hell should....” Then he recalled his and Sheppard's conversation from last night. “Actually, he did mention something about a nurse. Why? Don't tell me you’re buying into his conspiracy theory.”
Daniel shrugged. “I am buying that something must have gone wrong at that hospital. If he had help from the inside that means someone else – someone sane – was of the same opinion as Sheppard.”
“Unless he schmoozed her,” Rodney said.
“Unless her was really a him and bothered enough by what was happening to get Sheppard out.”
Rodney didn't buy it but decided it was best to keep an open mind. An insane, skinny, sickly Sheppard wasn't pretty to look at which meant it would have taken some pretty hefty flirting (which Rodney doubted even Casanova could pull off if he was out of his mind) plus a solid reason for that nurse to take pity on him enough to sneak him out.
As if reading his mind, Daniel said, “Those nurses – to put it mildly – are hard-asses. All eye-batting and coy smiling will get you is an extra helping of sedatives. If someone on the inside helped John escape, it was because they had a pretty good reason to.”
“So why not just report it?” Rodney asked. “Send an email? A fax? Be all anonymous if they didn't want to risk their job security? Why be all... cloak and dagger to the extreme?”
They were redundant questions, which Daniel was well aware of when his head bobbed in slow, sage acknowledgment. Why indeed go through all the trouble of breaking someone out when a well-typed email could be just as effective? Unless the one helping the escapee knew the hospital would be quick about covering their folly, possibly even knew the hospital would go so far as to kill Sheppard. A paranoid theory, yes, but as Rodney had said more than once already, he wasn't taking chances.
Daniel let his hands hang between his knees, his fingertips tapping together one at a time. “You mentioned something about Sheppard having the belief that he was being experimented on?”
With a snort, Rodney crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “Yes, the delusional man is under the impression he might, just possibly, be the guinea pig of an experiment.”
The archaeologist's fingers stilled. He looked up at Rodney, one eyebrow raised high on his forehead as though McKay were the one acting crazy. “You don't believe him?”
Rodney's arms dropped like useless weights to his sides, and he gaped. “The man tried to rip off his own skin because he thought there were Iratus bugs underneath – which, by the way, are the size of puppies... uh, the bugs, not his skin... and seemed to think the facility was being run by a Wraith queen every other day. What, exactly, is there to believe?”
Daniel shrugged helplessly. “Well... I wouldn't quite label it 'believe'. More like... consider? Look, when I was admitted....” He trailed off then winced. “Okay, I was a little... not in my right mind... but for reasons that were neither stress related nor the consequence of prolonged 'gate use. I'd been infected with a weapon, nothing more. A weapon that made me go insane out of the blue. An alien weapon developed by an alien to fight other aliens.”
Rodney's arms returned to their folded position over his chest as his foot tapped impatiently. “And your point is?”
Now it was Daniel doing the eye-roll. “I would think it obvious.”
“Sheppard's been infected with an alien weapon?”
“No! I mean... who knows? The point is our line of work – which basically involves doing the impossible on a daily basis. We can't afford not to consider all possibilities and that includes the possibility that Sheppard was being used in an experiment. In fact, it wouldn't be the first time. We've come across entire towns full of metaphorical guinea pigs, Goa'uld labs on Earth... do you see what I'm getting at?”
Rodney's arms lowered more slowly back to his sides. He saw clear as day what Daniel was getting at; he just didn't believe it. Neither did he want to buy into it, not without more concrete proof. Rodney couldn't imagine why anyone would want to experiment on Sheppard. Teal'c and Teyla, maybe, what with their unusual biological and genetic attributes. But Sheppard – there really wasn't much to the guy. His strong use of the ATA gene, maybe. Sheppard had mentioned being asked about iratus DNA, but that could have been part of the therapy since it was iratus bugs John had been hallucinating. The bug DNA still in Sheppard's body was so thin it might as well not exist according to what Carson had said. There was nothing to Sheppard to experiment on.
McKay twitched his head. “Okay, possibility of experimentation we'll put on the table for later. Right now we need to figure out what to do about Sheppard. I -” The solid thump coming from the vicinity of the hall made Rodney close his eyes and sigh. “Starting with strapping him to the bed.” He marched off into the bedroom, hearing Daniel's footfalls not too far behind.
The upper half of Sheppard's body was hanging off the bed an inch from the bucket again. He must have been heading to the bucket when his strength gave out, sliding him to the side according to the trail of watery bile marking the path. It was a little unnerving, like coming in to find a dead body, except for the low and plaintive moans of misery emanating from that body.
Rodney heaved a heavier sigh. “Let's get him back into bed.”
Together, he and Daniel lifted Sheppard back onto the mattress and pillow. Rodney pulled the blanket back over Sheppard's shuddering body, the colonel limp as a rag and barely conscious with his bruised looking eyes at half-mast. Rodney realized with a swallow that Sheppard was looking a hell of a lot worse. He pressed the back of his hand to the pale man's forehead then checked his pulse at the neck, the skin cool and clammy under his fingers. Sheppard flinched both times at the contact.
“He doesn't look good,” Daniel said.
“You think?” Rodney snapped. Worry immediately sobered him. “The weather's been cold, muggy, and he hitchhiked in it. And I'd bet a week's worth of pay,” he grimaced internally at such a Sheppard euphemism, “that he did so without any food in his stomach and barely any water. That's a recipe for a compromised immune system right there, my friend.”
Rodney grabbed another blanket from the closet that he draped over Sheppard. He then, finally, launched into cleaning up all the vomit as had been his intent before the interruption. Daniel, meanwhile, managed to both hover by the bed and stay out of the way. He ended up at the head looking down on Sheppard who was asleep, his breathing even while sweat beaded his brow. When Daniel pressed his hand to John's forehead, the colonel shivered with a small gasp.
“I don't feel a fever,” Daniel said, his tone thoughtful but his features tight with concern. “His skin's really cool.”
“So I noticed,” Rodney said, still mopping. He just wasn't sure what it meant. Maybe the fever had broken or Sheppard was sick from dehydration. Taking into more consideration the latter, Rodney set the mop against the wall and grabbed the water bottle from the night stand. It took a minute of patting Sheppard's face until the man stirred and awoke enough to take the bottle being shoved into his hands. After one rinse and spit followed by three deep swallows, he set the bottle back on the night stand and promptly passed back out into sleep.
Rodney shot Daniel a helpless glance. “I think puking, um... wears him out.”
With John as cared for as he was going to get, the two men took themselves back into the living room. Rodney shuffled to the couch and dropped into it, feeling ten years older and ten pounds heavier from ever mounting fatigue. And all he'd done since the day began was have a few panic attacks and clean up vomit. Daniel was now the one standing on the other side of the coffee table with his arms crossed, regarding Rodney with a sympathetic eye. Though Rodney really wished he wouldn't. He already had the pity part covered in the form of self-pity and was in need of answers, not compassion.
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Date: 2008-06-13 07:02 am (UTC)From:Now, I'm really worried about John. If he was injured badly enough to be forced to Earth, I'm guessing for rehabilitation, then what lingering problem does he still have?
Running off to the next part!
(oh to help you out, if you don't like cutting things in half. If you don't use rich text, you can fit 14,000 words in a single post.)
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Date: 2008-06-13 07:20 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 01:03 pm (UTC)From:fabulous
Date: 2008-06-13 07:30 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)GET A DOCTOR ONE OF YOU IDIOTS! JOHN needs help!
TheNaggingCube
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Date: 2008-06-14 04:58 am (UTC)From:And: "And all he'd done since the day began was have a few panic attacks and clean up vomit." I've had similar days. They are exhausting.
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Date: 2008-06-29 08:13 am (UTC)From:somehow i read the ending of this fic before the beginning.
poor shep. he got majorly whummped. Daniel, Rodney and Shep- MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS! :D
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Date: 2011-09-12 01:38 am (UTC)From:Daniel is perfect, sympathy balanced with the scientific approach, balanced with background info and more detachment than Rodney will ever be able to bring into this situation.
Nice to see a well-written Daniel in a mainly sga focussed fic.