Current mood:	artistic
Entry tags:	ca_pierson:mckay/sheppard, stargate atlantis

SGA McKay/Sheppard - Table 9 (#37): Out of Curiosity
Author: ca_pierson
Title: Out of Curiosity
Table: Table 9
Prompt: 37. Suspended Animation
For the 50episodes asylum.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2.609
Warnings: Pre-Slash
Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis does not belong to me, neither do any of the characters in this story. I do own the plot, however.
Beta: darkmoore

37. Suspended Animation

Being woken up by the radio had started to become a habit. A bad one at that. Funny how being the commanding officer of Atlantis had turned out to be one crisis after another. Briefly John Sheppard wondered if Dr. Weir and McKay were expected to fuse with their ear-sets as well, or if it was just him. Then he forced himself into a sitting position, grabbed the offensive piece of equipment and placed it at his left ear. A tap later he growled, “Sheppard here. This better be good, I’m missing my beauty sleep.”

Stackhouse, Sir. We’ve got a problem in one of the newly discovered labs.

“Oh really?” John asked sarcastically. A problem with a new lab. Imagine that. Already in the progress of stepping into his trousers, he continued speaking, “What kind of problem are we talking about?”

I really think you have to see this one yourself, Sir.

By the time the Marine on the other end had finished speaking John was already dressed and headed down the corridor to the closest transporter. “I’m on my way.” He tapped the radio again to close the line and checked his sidearm briefly before placing it in the leg holster. Some days he wished he could simply throw the radio into the sea, it would solve so many of his problems.

John had no problem locating the lab. His team had explored this part of the city yesterday and there was only one place that held people at the moment. The yelling might have tipped him off as well.

“Are you all idiots? No wonder Rodney screams at you always!”

John hadn’t known Zelenka had it in him, but the man could give McKay a run for his money. That the normally rather quiet man got loud was a bad sign though and John lengthened his stride and steeled himself for the catastrophic event awaiting him. It should have been their resident genius yelling, not Radek Zelenka. If this was important enough to warrant getting John out of bed at this time of the night, then Dr. Rodney McKay should already be there, whipping his minions into action with ‘kind’ words and forceful encouragement. As he rounded the corner John could see immediately what the problem was: McKay was caught in a man sized bubble of . . . something. He and the liquid hovered in the middle of the room. For a split second John grimaced but quickly controlled himself. “What the hell happened?” He demanded of no-one in particular.

“Rodney found interesting piece of Ancient tech. It then ate him,” Zelenka explained curtly without even looking up from his monitor.

Turning to the bubble John tried to find it funny, but just couldn’t. Rodney looked peaceful, though. His eyes were closed and his hands were hanging by his side in an uncharacteristic stillness that was creeping John out more than it should. At least Rodney’s chest was moving slightly. Breathing, John thought, relieved, he’s still breathing.

A tendril of worry wrapped itself around John’s spine. Whatever Rodney had managed to get himself into yet again, there was no doubt for him that they could get him out of it. For someone who was supposedly a genius he could be incredibly stupid sometimes, John thought to himself while he carefully kept his distance to the bubble. "Can you get him out of there, doc?"

"We're not even sure why it did this. I cannot tell function of the device. Rodney was sure it was used for searching."

“Searching? Searching what?” John asked, keeping the worry out of his voice. What came out was cold and flat and probably worried the people around him more if he had let his emotions show through.

Zelenka snorted to show his disgust with the situation, but the typing noises never ceased. “We didn’t find out. It ate Rodney when he moved away from it a bit. Others have gone into the middle of room, but device was not interested in them.”

Absentmindedly Sheppard nodded, riveted by the bubble of wavering liquid in front of him. Why did it seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to take a closer look? Drawn like a moth to a flame, Sheppard reached out to the glowing, seemingly liquid sphere. He wanted to touch it, wanted to reach into it and pull Rodney out. John had barely time to register a, "Colonel! Do not touch bubble, we don't know what-", before he was sucked upwards and embraced by soothing blue lights.

Oooo00O00oooO

Elizabeth was unusually restless as she paced the length of the infirmary. It wasn’t every day that the commanding officer and the chief scientist were swallowed up by a big blue glob of something. She hadn’t been able to come to terms with it yet, even though the expression on Zelenka’s face already told her everything she needed to know. It’d take a miracle of the highest order to get them out soon.

Carson Beckett and his team were waiting with her, some of them sleeping, others talking quietly. It was reassuring to have them there. But the longer it took the science team to get John and Rodney out of the device, the harder the whole situation became on her nerves.

She felt intensely angry at the Ancients for leaving around all these dangerous artefacts and at Rodney, too. Rodney, who couldn’t seem to take his own advice about not touching everything they stumbled over.

It had only been twenty-four hours, yet. Not even an Atlantean day, but it felt like it had been months. Elizabeth just couldn’t get the picture of Rodney and John caught in that . . . stuff out of her head. It made her feel sick to the stomach to see them like that. Caught in it like flies in amber. The thought of them being stuck forever kept popping up and Elizabeth couldn’t help herself.

“We should go and get some rest,” she forced herself to say. “Zelenka will call us if we’re needed, there’s no point in all of us hovering here.” She shared a resigned look with Carson, who seemed as worried and harried as she felt right now. “Maybe someone could stay with Zalenka in case he gets them out and they need immediate attention?” Tired as she was the thought of leaving them all alone in that lab was a distasteful one. She shuddered. No-one should be alone down there.

They had spent most of the night in the lab and the majority of the personnel had been awake when the medical team had given in to Zelenka’s growling demands of leaving him to work in peace and walked back to the infirmary. They had been approached by quite a few people, asking worried questions and offering help. And the concern was not only for John, a lot of them had asked about Rodney as well.

As the medical personnel started slowly drifting out to get some much needed rest Elizabeth and Carson stayed behind by unspoken agreement.

“What are we going to do if we can’t get them out again?”

Elizabeth felt herself growing stiff, “That won’t happen. We’ll get them out and I’m sure they’ll be alright.” Of course she knew that she was being delusional, but she couldn’t deal with it right now. Didn’t want to deal with losing two of her highest ranking people in one go. They’d lost them in Atlantis of all the places.

“I hope you’re right, Elizabeth,” Carson answered her, his voice filled with sadness.

“I hope so, too,” she said, understanding where his negativity came from. They had lost too many people in Pegasus already and Elizabeth couldn’t fault Carson for being pessimistic as long as he only voiced it to her. “You should go and get some sleep as well. Zelenka will call us in if there are any changes.”

They walked down the corridor in companionable silence and Elizabeth was glad that Carson accompanied her to her door before doubling back to his own room. Sometimes this place scared her. When unforeseen things happened, it reinforced her knowledge of how little they really understood. How small and young they were compared to the Ancients who had built this place. Would they ever comprehend their technology completely?

Times like these she wasn’t sure they should want to understand it all.

Oooo00O00oooO

Rodney felt warm. Wonderfully warm and loved. In his entire life he had never felt anything even close to this. Ever. Like someone loved him so much they would willingly put down their life for him. He was happy where he was. Missing nothing. There was a dim memory of urgency. Something he had to do. Some place he should be at. People he should take care of. But he couldn’t pin the thought down. It didn’t bother him much.

He was at peace.

The blue light was all around him and in a rather detached way he was aware of the fact that he should be freaking out right now. But it didn’t hurt him. In fact, it warmed him, even energized him in some way.

So . . . beautiful, he thought. He closed his eyes briefly. For a moment he only bathed in the warmth, in the light, in the feeling of being cared about greatly, not wanting to do anything else. Rodney could feel the fluid rippling around him, circulating, keeping him afloat.

Suddenly his world rocked and something slid into place. He felt whole, completed in a way he couldn’t understand. Everything he had known, people, places, duties . . . the only important thing was existing. Nothing else mattered. Rodney reached out, his fingers brushing over the soft skin of someone else’s hands for a brief moment until their fingers were entwined. It felt so right.

Approval mingled with the love that surrounded him and he felt a gentle pressure against his back. He drifted towards his new friend, felt the other moving towards him in a similar fashion.

This is nice.

It was the thought of somebody else inside his head, but it didn’t feel alien. It couldn’t have been more part of Rodney if it had been his own thought. Realisation of who was here with him came gradually. John?

Rodney.

The immediate answer made Rodney unspeakably happy. His cheek was resting against John’s now; Rodney could feel the slight stubble against his own clean shaven one. They were touching head to toes, and yet they were still drifting towards each other. With every moment their exchanges became easier, until it felt like he was wrapped around John in body and mind.

And then he was ripped from this heaven they were floating in. He felt how he was pulled outwards brutally. Torn away from John and spewed out into a harsh, cold world. He hit the floor with some force and felt the fluid being expelled from his lungs as he grasped for air. The feeling of utter loss was so intense that Rodney would have cried with the pain of it if he had had the air to do so. “No,” he moaned. Rodney had meant to scream out his denial, but the energy he had felt earlier had evaporated like the blue glow that had encompassed him so completely.

It took him a moment before he could open his eyes and look around. Rodney recognised the lab immediately, but there were more people staring at him than he remembered being there only a moment before. What- He coughed up the last vestiges of blue fluid and had to pause a moment to rest. What happened?

The next minutes passed in hectic confusion as he was brought to the infirmary. He could hear the steps behind him and he was positive that more people were hurrying along with John. Rodney had no idea how he could know this, but he had a dim memory of talking to John. Holding hands with him. Oh god. I’m never going to live this down, Rodney thought, near panic. Neither will John. Amazingly that second thought calmed him.

“What happened?” He demanded again. None of the scientists huddled around had answered his question the first time and Rodney didn’t expect an answer this time, either. “Would someone please enlighten me?”

“Everything’s okay, Rodney, you had a wee bit of a technical problem, but it seems to have fixed itself now,” Carson answered in the voice he used to calm down irritated patients. A voice Rodney knew all too well. Annoyed Rodney glared up at the ceiling, his mouth a thin line of disgust. He still complained all through the close inspection Carson put him through. Even after they put him to bed he just couldn’t keep still, fidgeting and kneading the blanket beneath his fingers. Something in the way they treated him so carefully and nice grated against his nerves.

Contrary to Rodney, John never said a word. His eyes were closed and he looked as if he was sleeping, which was starting to worry Rodney just a little bit. “What happened,” he demanded to know once more. “What’s going on with him? And what was the technical problem?”

Carson looked at Rodney and for the first time since he had been hurried here, Rodney saw the dark rings underneath the doctor’s eyes. “You and Major Sheppard were caught in a blue ball of liquid for about 26 hours, Rodney. Remember that device you activated?”

Rodney frowned. “Small? Round? With a lot of nubs?”

“That’s the one, lad. When you activated it, Radek said an intense blue light enveloped the whole room. Then it concentrated on you and liquefied. You were hovering in the middle of that room for about ten minutes before Major Sheppard arrived.”

“He touched the device?”

Carson shook his head slowly, “No. He touched the bubble and it kind of . . . sucked him in.”

Rodney rubbed his eyes tiredly and then looked at Carson. “26 hours you say?”

“Yes. Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”

Shaking his head slowly Rodney started into the distance with unseeing eyes. “I remember . . . blue. It was peaceful. Quiet and peaceful. And I felt loved and cherished.” He only noticed Carson’s worried expression on the periphery of his awareness. “It was really great. I’ve never felt anything like it. There isn’t a place I wanted to rather be, and when whatever it was let us go it felt like I was being expelled from somewhere. Painful. Just . . . it’s all very hazy now. Like it was ages ago.” He shook his head, trying to call back what he had experienced, but apart from the feelings everything else was slipping from his memory.

Carson had sat down on the end of Rodney’s bed during the explanation and was now looking at him, intrigued. “That’s very interesting. Do you remember John being there?” His voice was gentle and he was obviously taking it easy on his friend.

Rodney frowned again. “Yes, I think I do. But we weren’t in there for a day. It felt like less than thirty minutes.” He looked over at John, who looked incredibly peaceful. “What’s wrong with him, Carson? Ill effects of the device?”

“No. It’s nothing. He reacted quite violently when the device let you go. We had to sedate him to get him here. You both seem fine, actually, but I’d like to keep you under observation for a day or two.”

Rodney nodded and leaned back against the pillows, his eyes drifting shut. It didn’t take long before he was soundly asleep.

The End.