Stargate Atlantis: Latitude

Chapter 10 - On the road

Rodney sat on his bed, crunching a rather tasteless fruit.  He wondered if it was under-ripe or just not very nice.  He took another large bite, chewing doggedly, and observed his friend.  John, exhausted by last night's enthusiastic storytelling, including the several encore chapters he'd been encouraged to add by popular acclaim, was still asleep.  His eyes were shadowed, the bones of the wrist poking out from beneath the blankets too prominent and Rodney had been annoyed the previous night, when the storytelling was finally over, at John's attempts to hide the fact that he was running a low grade fever again.  John had received a frustrated "Chuh!" from Rodney, swiftly followed by an alien Tylenol and an order to, "Just go to bed, Sheppard!"

Rodney had overheard some important facts while eating his meal the night before.  He had sat not far from one of the wagon-drivers and had learnt, to his dismay, that it would take what he had worked out to be approximately two months earth time to reach Erransport, where ships departed for the continent on which the Stargate was located.  The fact that Rodney had been able to put together a plan of action to cover this vast distance and to achieve the funds necessary to cover passage across the ocean did not much cheer him up; they would have to depart the following day and he didn't think John was ready.

Rodney knelt on the floor so that his mouth was right next to John's ear and took a very large, very crunchy bite from his fruit.  John's hand shot out and he had grabbed Rodney's throat before his eyes were even open.  He let go at Rodney's choking cry and sat up, looking rumpled and still half asleep.

"What d'you do that for, McKay?"

"Not because I wanted to be strangled!" said Rodney, rubbing his throat.  "We need to talk!"

"So talk!" John said grumpily.

"We have to leave tomorrow," Rodney began abruptly.  "The wagon train is  leaving and one of the drivers wants to stay here - his family live in Tarrana.  So we can take his wagon back to the depot and collect the rest of his pay, which we can use to pay for a pleasant ocean voyage to get us at least to the same continent as the Stargate."

John blinked and sat up a little straighter, running a hand through his hair.  "Oh! Well... good!"

"Yes, that's just great, isn't it?  Because two months in an open wagon is just what we need!"

"Two months?" John ran his hand through his hair again, rubbing at the back of his neck.  He let out a long sigh and shrugged.  "We knew it was a long way.  What do we do for food?  I guess we have to sleep in the wagon."

"No, actually, we don't.  The wagons are a public service paid for by 'Her Highness' so we get food and accommodation at the village waystations."

"Well, that's not so bad then, is it?"

Rodney slumped in his awkward position on the floor and picked at a splinter of wood, pulling it loose from the planking.  He sighed and twiddled the splinter in his fingers, opened his mouth and shut it again.  John waited. Then Rodney's words all came out in a rush.

"I keep thinking, maybe Zelenka will come up with something, maybe they'll come for us and all of a sudden we'll find ourselves on the bridge of the Daedalus and we can go home and carry on with our normal lives, although what normal us I'm never quite sure..." He trailed off, still picking at the edge of the plank.  John said nothing.

"But they won't.  Come for us.  They won't, because there's nothing for Zelenka to come up with.  That time you got taken, you sent that subspace Morse code." Rodney let out a huff of humourless laughter. "Typical Sheppard improvisation."

Sheppard squirmed on the bed and said softly, "We'll get home, Rodney, we always do eventually."

"Yes, but you see I could have done something!"   Back on the Traveler ship!  I could have sent something, anything, some kind of marker, some kind of 'We were here!' anything, just somewhere to start looking!"