Rodney stopped, appalled by his own thoughts. This was Ronon, Ronon and Jennifer; he couldn’t let his mind wander in those directions, not if he wanted to stay sane. No wonder Michael had gone crazy, he thought. It was simply too confusing to keep track of who one was.
“Come on, McKay,” Ronon called.
They were almost to the break in the cliff — Ronon was there, in fact, stopped with his feet in the red spill of dirt. Jennifer wasn’t far behind him, her hair loosening as it dried.
“Hurry up,” Ronon called again. Rodney bared teeth at him and dragged himself forward.
He wasn’t sure quite how he got up the last few meters — off-hand and stick bracing himself and Ronon shouting at him to keep going — but he knew when he reached the top that he wasn’t going any further. He staggered a meter from the cliff’s edge and sank down onto the grass, still warm from the sun. He saw Jennifer and Ronon exchange a look, and then Ronon said, gruffly, “OK. We stop for the night.”
“We need to talk,” Jennifer said, and Ronon shook his head, his hair flying.
“Nope.”
He busied himself collecting stones and wood, built a perfect stack of branches, kindling tucked neatly into the gaps, as though the right, the correct method, would keep them from having to have this conversation. Rodney watched him, feeling some of the weakness ease as his body finished healing his bruises and he stopped exerting himself.
“Yes, we do,” Jennifer said. “Rodney —” She stopped, bit her lip. “Rodney, you have to feed.”
“I’m fine,” he said, and knew nobody believed him.
“You’re out of your mind,” Ronon said. “He’ll kill — whichever one of us he feeds on, and if he doesn’t kill us, he’ll take years out of our lives. You remember what Sheppard looked like —”
“I’ve taken the retrovirus,” Jennifer said patiently. “I’m ninety percent — well, seventy-five percent certain this version will work. And assuming it does, Rodney can feed and nothing will happen to me.”
“Except you’ll suffer,” Ronon said. “Horribly. And if you’re wrong, you’ll die.”
“If I’m wrong,” Jennifer said, “Rodney will return what he took. Just the way Todd did.”
“Jennifer,” Rodney said, and she turned to look at him. The setting sun was below the treeline now, so that she was backlit, her face in shadow, her loosened hair catching the last of the light. His heart ached to see her like that, and his hand throbbed in time to his heartbeat. “I don’t — I told you, I never fed myself. I don’t know if I could return your — life. I don’t know if I know how.”
“And if you don’t feed now,” Jennifer said, “you will die.”
“You’ve been wrong before,” Ronon said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I have, and you were right. I’m trying to learn from that. But — Ronon, look at him. Can you tell me he’s not dying?”
“I’m fine,” Rodney said, but couldn’t muster anything approaching conviction.
There was a little silence, and then Ronon’s face twisted, an expression that might have been laughter or tears. “Yeah. OK. If he wasn’t bad, he wouldn’t be trying to tell us he was all right.” He paused. “But, Jennifer —”
“Don’t,” she said. “I have to. I swore an oath, to heal the sick, and this is Rodney, and I love him. There’s no other choice.”
“God!” Ronon shoved himself to his feet. “All right. But you can’t — don’t ask me to watch.”
He stalked away between the trees, vanishing into the sun. Jennifer took a breath, came to sit beside Rodney, unzipping her jacket enough to bare the skin beneath. Rodney let her take his off hand, feeling for the pulse point.
“It’s not good, is it,” he said, quietly, and she shook her head.
“It’s now or never, Rodney.”
“Jennifer, I —” Rodney stopped. There were too many things to say, too many things he needed to remember, to mention, to be sure someone knew; a thousand thoughts, scattering like quicksilver, everything he would never see again. His feeding hand hurt, far worse than it had ever done before, and, looking down, he could see the handmouth gaping, see and feel the inner membrane pulsing, matching not the beat of his heart, but hers. Now or never, and no matter what he did, nothing would be right again — He lifted his feeding hand, saw her close her eyes.
“Oh, God,” he whispered, and let that stand for all the prayers he didn’t believe in: don’t let me screw this up, please let the retrovirus work, please don’t let me kill her… He placed his feeding hand against her skin and set his claws.
Her life jolted through him, sweet and clear and true, sharp and strong as the note of a horn. He pulled back, terrified that he would see her withered already, but her face was still young, even as it twisted in pain. Her fists were clenched, there were tears at the corners of her eyes, and still he fed, helpless, gulping life. He hadn’t known how far gone he was, neither Dust nor Ember had let him truly starve, and a thousand clichés flooded through him. Rain in the desert, silence after the storm — no, it was life and reprieve, and he released her, newly afraid.
“Jennifer?”
She hadn’t aged, her skin was smooth and her hair still golden, but her eyes were closed, and she sagged in his arms.
“Jennifer!” He touched her throat, trying to remember his first aid training — not that there was anything in it that would cover either being fed upon or some strange retroviral side effect — and gasped with relief to feel her pulse strong and steady under his touch. She shifted then, shrugging her shoulder the way she did sometimes in sleep, and he cradled her against his shoulder, smoothing her hair in helpless apology.
He didn’t know how long they sat there. Long enough that the air turned thick and purple in the twilight, the sun a distant ember beyond the trees. Ronon emerged from the wood, his face set and cold. His eyes narrowed, seeing them, and Rodney said quickly, “She’s sleeping. She’s all right.”
Ronon didn’t answer, came to kneel beside them, touched Jennifer’s neck with one big hand. He found her pulse and took a long breath like a drowning man, but pushed himself up and away to busy himself with the fire. He spitted the coney efficiently, set it to cook, all without looking at them again, and Rodney shifted uneasily, Jennifer a solid weight against his shoulder.
“Ronon, I —”
“If she dies,” Ronon said, “I will kill you.”
After a moment, Rodney dipped his head. “Fair enough.”
Jennifer rolled over, wincing as her muscles protested the slightest movement. OK, that’s the last time she would go out drinking with a linebacker, no matter how good-looking — She stopped, her surroundings registering fully. Not college, not a night of partying, not even residency, that permanent haze of misery and exhaustion. An unnamed planet, a shelter taken from a Wraith lifepod, and — Oh, God.
She sat up, flinching. She felt as though someone had beaten her with a stick, every muscle aching. OK, that wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t life-threatening, either. So, if she was remembering correctly — She looked down at her open jacket, saw the wound just below her clavicle, the puncture marks of the claws and the puffy scar where Rodney’s handmouth had fixed to her skin. It had closed more than the claw marks, looked more like an inflamed scratch than anything serious. Automatically, she checked her pulse, tipped her head to the side as she counted: normal; her temperature felt grossly normal, too. In general, she felt as though she’d just gotten over the flu. Not pleasant, but survivable. The retrovirus worked.