Chapter Text
The vultures didn’t wait long to start circling.
At least, that was how Dr. Rodney McKay thought of it. Atlantis arrived to save the day, standing between Earth and certain destruction while Colonel John “Self Sacrifice Is My Middle Name; No, Really, It IS” Sheppard got ready to blow himself and the Hive up with a nuke, and Rodney “Always Saving The Colonel’s Bacon” McKay… along with a little help from Ronon, Teyla, and Major Lorne... came up with a much better plan that involved no one getting sacrificed, save a few hundred Wraith... give or take one. Todd, mainly.
Okay, so it wasn’t so much a plan as it was an accidental combination of two very bad, very hastily put together and poorly thought out plans that somehow managed to work, and a whole lot of making it up as they went along, but still, it worked. The Wraith Super Hive got blown up, Ronon was alive, though battered and somewhat rumpled, Teyla was alive and well, and Sheppard was not sacrificing himself and thus ending up very dead.
Of course, he wasn’t going to say any of that out loud.
They’d barely had enough time to get treated for their injuries and get a good meal in them before the shit started hitting the fan.
Between two branches of the U.S. military flexing their muscles over who had rights to the city, and members of the I.O.A. all wanting their piece of the Atlantis pie, it was all the command staff could do to keep things together. Rodney knew something was up, though, when he realized O’Neill was quietly supplying the city with everything he could get away with, and while staff was being rotated out on leaves, no one was being reassigned just yet.
Yet being the operating word.
Even with all the leaves being given, the city wasn’t being left bare of personnel. It wasn’t a skeleton crew being left on the city. It was more like a skeleton crew being rotated out.
He wasn’t sure what O’Neill was up to, but in coming days, Rodney McKay found it in himself to be grateful. “Never underestimate O’Neill,” should be a watchword for every single idiot who came into the SGC. Because seriously, how many times had the man saved the planet? “They should have known better,” Rodney would rave at Sheppard later.
And Sheppard would only smirk. Because really, what more could he say?
When the shit hit the fan, it always paid to have O’Neill at your back.