kristen999 | "Sudden Jolt" (1/1) SGA

Title: “Sudden Jolt” (1/1)
Author: Kristen999
Character(s): Ronon and Sheppard
Genre(s): Stargate Atlantis: General- Friendship
Rating: K
Words: 2,055
Summary: An accident teaches Ronon more than one valuable lesson.

Notes: Just a short fic to cleanse the pallet while I try to re-tool another story.

I want to thank

rednzfor the quick beta. Thank you!

------------------------------

Ronon knows that a healthy ego goes a long way. It’s bravado, confidence, success from life experiences.

Give him a gun and where to aim, destruction will follow.

Battles are just tests of skills. Impossible odds, are the vocabulary of the weak.

His body is a means to fight, run, and obey commands.

He's used his hands as instruments of death and as a means of expression.

The same nimble fingers that had caressed Melina’s face have crushed the bones of enemies. They've been tools used to protect life - not to give it back.

Ever.

He's only felt fear a few times, and right now is one he can count on trembling fingers.

He speaks into his head-set. “I don't know if I can, Doc.”

“Yes, you can lad, I'll talk ya through it.”

“We're ten minutes out, Ronon... just… just...... God, can he do it?” Rodney's voice garbles in and out.

Ronon can do anything he sets his mind to. Except this time, maybe the doubts are well founded.

He ignores the blood pooling on the floor where Sheppard landed, cracking his head on the top step. The pilot's chest is still, no breath exhales from his paling lips, and Ronon's nose flares from the odor of burnt flesh.

Something about the ABC's comes to mind but he forgets them, draws oxygen deeply into his lungs, and pinches the colonel's nose closed, blowing air in twice.

“Be sure to keep his airway clear.”

Chin... tilt the chin. Ronon growls, forgetting that part. Sheppard's chest didn't rise. He re-adjusts, repeats, and watches the results of forcing the other man's lungs to expand.

The carotid still does not beat.

“Nothing,” he gruffs into the com.

“Begin chest compressions, remember ---------”

The energy pulse hits again cutting off communications, the same damn buildup that triggered the initial overload.
“Doc!”

Ronon clicks the radio again out of habit, but it doesn't matter, he's on his own.

He feels the man's ribs, counting them until they meet in middle of the pilot's chest. Bones are fragile things and he imagines an x-ray that Carson's shown him. His fingers trail right up to the tip of the breastbone.

There is no time to hesitate. Or to fail.

He sites the heel of one hand, then places the other on top, and presses down, keeping his arms straight, elbows locked.

This is the point when he broke the dummy in class... when he was reminded that he was only good at taking life.

Knives, guns, fists. Death, that's his talent.

He releases the compression.

One and two.

Three and four.

Teyla's soothing voice reminds him to press in a steady, regular speed, like a child's nursery rhyme, until he reaches fifteen and he counts in his head to keep from compressing out of beat.

Ronon ignores an internal voice that tells him Sheppard is dead, and beating up his lifeless body won't bring him back. He silences the nagging doubt. This is just another fight and they'll face it side-by-side.

Fourteen and fifteen.

Pinch the nose. Breathe in life, breathe out. In and out.

Nothing.

Ronon's hands scramble on top of his friend's chest, almost forgetting to count the ribs in his haste and frustration to make the colonel's heart beat. He finds the spot, begins the cycle again, adrenaline pumping his arms, panic making his pulse vibrate in his ears.

Crack.

The room fills with his howl of anger.

-----------------------

“Hey big guy, can you get the door open?”

Ronon rolled his eyes. “What did you do to get us trapped in here?”

Sheppard cracked a grin. “It closed after we entered. I didn't touch a thing.”

The room was another small lab, another abandoned room filled with experiments and instruments of unknown nature. The exit was sealed, and no matter how hard Ronon clawed at the crack, the heavy door didn't budge.

The lights flickered off and on as the strange power fluctuations hit again, and he began straining against the force of the mechanism.

“No dice?” Sheppard called out.

Layers of steel and powered locks proved the victor as Ronon tried to pry the doors loose. He stepped back annoyed, a grunt his answer.

“We'll find another way. McKay's phantom anomalies are coming from the room adjacent to this one and I know he'll get us out just so he can get his greedy hands on it,” Sheppard said, fussing with one of the control boards.

“You think one of those switches will get the door open just in case he can't?” Ronon asked.

Sheppard made a noncommittal sound, fiddling with a few knobs where some of the panel lit up from his touch. “That, or a blow torch,” he joked.

“We don't carry those on a regular basis,” Ronon reminded him.

“You pack a deck of cards?”

Searching for another way out proved fruitless; the other exit just as iron clad as the way they came in. Still, Ronon tried jamming his fingers into the crevice to no avail. Being stuck in a musty, cramped room was the last way he wanted to spend his afternoon. After bending back a fingernail and waving the affected finger in the air, he spun around.

“Found the right one yet?” he asked, annoyed.

Sheppard was doing the Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo thing, shrugging his shoulders, touching several buttons on the panel. When that didn't work, he located two levers, quirked an eyebrow, and pulled them down.

Then the next energy surge hit.

----------------------------

“Incorrect hand positioning can break the ribs during compressions,” Carson had explained to the class.

That was the second time he killed his dummy, and it took Teyla to steer him back to the table once more and try again. “You will never know when we might have to do this,” she’d said.

“Doc!” Ronon urgently tries the com again, but only static echoes in his ear.

He stares at Sheppard's lifeless body, his ashen face, and the flayed skin of the colonel's open palms, still red and oozing.

In guilt, Ronon glares at his own.

He has twisted with care every braid in his hair, just as his mother taught him. His fingers can still skillfully carve anything out of wood, one whittle at a time, mimicking his father's lifelong craft. He can channel a million feelings all at once with a single intimate touch.

His hands can mean so much more than weapons.

He places them higher up on Sheppard's chest, lacing his fingers this time, and begins again. The mantra of counting resumes in his head.

He does this cycle over and over again until he feels lightheaded. It doesn't matter . He forges on, arms trembling from exhaustion, face sweaty from exertion, his own lungs ready to burst. Time has lost any measurement in his mind, and the annoying voice of earlier berates him for flogging the dead.

“Damn it!” he curses.

-------------

Ronon ran to the console where Sheppard's hands seemed frozen to the spot, while the rest of the colonel's body seized in place as wave after wave of energy poured into him. Sparks erupted from the panel, smoke sizzling from the instruments that locked his friend in place. He knew not to touch the pilot or the panels unless he wanted to share the same shock that was frying Sheppard.

The radio was out, and he scanned the room for anything that might help, spotting the largest piece of equipment towards the wall. Science wasn’t something he was great at, but over the past two years, he’d picked up a thing or two. Pulling out his blaster, Ronon shot at the large device he suspected controlled the power to the console.

McKay would both be proud and pissed at what he did, but he was either right or lucky because the charge stopped raging through Sheppard. The cessation of current sent the colonel flying backwards, until his head smacked the hard edge of the stairs. The first thing Ronon noticed was the awful smell of charred flesh as he knelt by the sprawled form, and checked for a pulse.

No heart beat, no breathing, and Ronon tried the radio in a panic.

“I have a medical emergency, Sheppard's not breathing!”

His head exploded with Rodney's hysteria, Teyla's alarm, and finally, after forever, Beckett's calmer tone explaining to him what he had to do.

“Do you remember that class you took, Ronon?”

--------------

Another fifteen rounds go by. With each one, he's more careful about how much force he uses. Ronon takes a precious moment to wipe at his brow, suck in air that's harder with the burning from his chest, and glowers angrily.

“Come on!” he urges the colonel.

He blinks at the red smear matting in the dark hair below, and reaches one more time for the neck when he sees Sheppard's boot jerk.

His eyes grow large. Ronon hopes it’s not his mind playing tricks, but then he feels the weak beat of an artery beneath his fingertips. The blood is circulating once again in his commander's body and he places his ear above the pilot's mouth, but doesn't feel any breath.

Licking his lips, knowing one small victory has been won, he goes back to funneling oxygen back into the colonel. This time, it's once every few seconds, and Ronon has to remind himself to breathe as well so he doesn't end up passing out.

McKay almost fainted in the same class, forgetting that the rescuer had to take in as much air as he was giving back.

“Ronon, this is Carson. Can you hear me?”

He ignores the radio, tries to save every bit of energy his screaming body is expending ,and tilts the pilot's chin up to repeat what has become the bane of his existence for the past several minutes.

He'd been the last person in class to get his certificate for completing the CPR course, staying hours after everyone else was done. He would not lose to a dummy.

Dots dance in his vision, and he rubs his eyes with a forearm to banish them. His head hurts, temples throb, but he stops only long enough to check to see if Sheppard's heart still beats, when the colonel abruptly gasps for air.

It's one of the most spectacular sights Ronon's seen in a long time. He almost rolls the pilot to his side in case he gets sick, but remembers something about head injuries, and instead tries to hold him still.

“Easy,” he says, but there's no way to hide the excitement in his voice.

Sheppard sputters and coughs, his chest rises and falls rapidly as his lungs work on their own. The pilot begins to gain his bearings but suddenly flails about. His gasping morphs into moaning and he tries to curl onto his side and move his ravaged hands towards his chest.

“Don't!” Ronon orders, grabbing both wrists to secure them.

“Mhhhhmmm... hurts,” Sheppard groans in a raspy voice.

“Lie still.”

Sheppard can't help himself, fighting off pain and shock as all the nerves in his palms awaken to agony. He again tries to roll over and bury his aching hands under his armpits, but Ronon remains firm but gentle, careful to avoid pressing on the damaged skin, waiting until the colonel calms a little.

He can hear Rodney on the radio telling them that they are outside the door, that they’re trying to get it open. Sheppard's legs twitch and jerk as he battles the panic and confusion of the past few minutes.

“What... w-what happened?” the colonel slurs.

You died and I brought you back.

“Another power flux hit and knocked you down. I think you have a concussion.”

The floor is still sticky from blood and Sheppard's eyes are dazed and glassy. The pilot swallows. “Are... y-you, alright?”

“I'm fine.”

I've learned what it feels like to give back a life.

Ronon keeps hold of Sheppard's wrists to make sure he doesn't injure his hands further, feeling the pulse under his thumb in a steady cadence.

The rescue arrives and the team frets with backboards, barrages of questions, and a swift trip back to Atlantis.

Later on tonight, after he's ensured that the colonel is resting comfortably in the infirmary, Ronon will go to his quarters and retrieve a small chunk of wood he got from the mainland and walk to one of the piers to begin slicing and carving one of the city's towers out of it.

He'll allow himself the indulgence of creating something once again, knowing that he has more to learn, more to offer, and that he has the tools to do so within his fingertips after all these years.