SGA Fic 1/3
This is the longest fic I've ever written, and it's about science fiction. I'm such a geek.
Title: The Roads Never Lead Where They're Supposed to Go [AO3]
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~23,000 words
Spoilers: 1x01/02 Rising, 1x10 The Storm.
Warnings: This fic does not have anything in it that requires a warning. Hopefully.
Summary:
For the B-Movie Ficathon Challenge: A brilliant geneticist plans to expose a lethal virus to every human being on the planet. Her objective: to destroy humankind in favour of her new strain of prehistoric dinosaurs. Two people stand in the way of her diabolical plan, a cynical night watchman and a lovely idealistic environmentalist. The two must overcome their differences long enough to uncover the scientist's scheme and fight her carnivorous creations in a desperate battle against the extinction of the human race.
In other words: A slightly different John and Rodney, in a slightly different Atlantis, fight Marines, dinosaurs, and each other. Alternate Universe. McKay/Sheppard, Elizabeth/Zelenka.
Podfic by reena_jenkins can be found here!
*
When Radek Zelenka was thirty-four, he won some sort of European award for some kind of incredible, astounding mathematical feat. Rodney McKay knew this, but it didn't make him resent Zelenka any less. When Rodney was thirty-four, he blew up a star and nearly killed Major Carter, which was why, he was told by a smug General Hammond, Zelenka was asked to lead the Atlantis Expedition instead of him.
"Oh, that's just great," Rodney said, "absolutely perfect. And what exactly am I supposed to do while someone stupider than me gets to do all the fun stuff and win all the Nobel prizes?"
He should've thanked his lucky stars he'd been allowed to go at all, the SGC said. They just wanted him as far away from Earth as possible. In fact, they hoped he died tragically, from hostile aliens, equipment malfunctions, or even accidental lemon ingestion.
But he couldn't be too outraged because Atlantis was-- well. Atlantis. Lost city of the motherfucking Ancients. There were databases and computers and unbelievably advanced technology and spaceships. Sure, they'd fucked up and assumed there'd be an extra ZPM just lying around, and Colonel Sumner was a son-of-a-bitch without a sense of humour who'd probably snap and kill them all, and everyone was terrified out of their minds -- but this was the most amazing thing Rodney'd ever been part of.
Rodney was in the majority; most of the scientists spent the first few weeks downright giddy. Some of them, like Vogel, even cried with joy when they found the laboratories intact. It was the Marines who were frightened. Sumner was quick to remind everyone Atlantis was a military base (and Rodney was just as quick to remind him that no, it really wasn't), and they were far from home without any allies. But Zelenka's reaction was more along the lines of the soldiers; he was so excited at first -- he practically jumped up and down and shrieked like a girl when Rodney and Groden showed him the gatejumpers -- but some time between the city rising and Sumner stepping through the wormhole to announce they'd been unwelcomed by the natives of whatever that planet was, Rodney took one look at Zelenka's ashen face and thought, "This isn't going to work." Of course, Rodney was fighting his own hysteria at the time, but Zelenka hastily retreated and left Rodney to do all the work. Just as it should be.
*
Within a week, Rodney was confined to the main laboratories. That's what they called it: "confined."
"And by 'confined to the labs,'" he said, "you mean, 'having complete access to Atlantis,' right? Because only an idiot would restrict an astrophysicist with a specialty in alien technology to the only area of the city without anything left to discover."
Two of the three soldiers looked uncomfortable. The other one, Sergeant Bates, simply narrowed his eyes. The look on his face said, "I hate civilians."
"Colonel Sumner's orders," he said flatly.
The other two men were Lieutenant Ford and Sergeant Markham. It took almost six months for Rodney to find out Ford was the one who named the gatejumpers. He was a nice kid -- as nice as anyone who loved blowing the shit out of things and killing people could be -- from somewhere in the midwestern United States; he was probably the soldier Rodney spoke to the most, considering Ford's choice of friends (and the female civilians he was constantly hitting on). When they walked through the stargate for the first time, the city dark until someone with the gene activated the lights, Ford started humming the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ford once asked Rodney if they had any black people in Canada. On his tour, he'd been every where from Japan to Germany, but he'd never been to his neighbour to the north. He never would, either; Ford lived to be an old man with a red-headed wife, six kids, and a farm on one of the Genii planets. His kids called Rodney "Uncle Rod." Markham, on the other hand, died in a freak accident in the south side of the city within the first five years of their arrival. The only thing Rodney knew about him was that his one personal item was a beat-up basketball.
So Rodney was stuck in the labs. He was sure Zelenka didn't bother to fight Sumner's orders; after all, he was the competition, right? He'd been to grad school, he knew how these things worked. Rodney was able to convince a few of the Marines to secretly bring him anything they found that was portable, and, being the eager lemmings they were, they brought him crate after crate of strange, misshapen Ancient artifacts, most of which didn't even work.
Most of the crates were filled entirely with objects that would only turn on with the gene. Unfortunately, Sumner liked to pair up people with the gene with people with guns, which didn't leave many ATA-inclined individuals left in the labs. Besides, not many of the physicists had the gene to begin with, although an unusually high proportion of the soldiers did.
Rodney pulled a sleek, silver box out of one of the crates a young Marine had dropped off earlier. It fit in the palm of his hand. Dumais stared at him in her intense, quiet way, until he snapped, "What?"
"I don't think it's a good idea to go around touching things," she said.
"Really?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "And just how many Marines died to bring us this? Oh wait, that's right, none. I know what I'm doing, Doctor."
He inspected the box, turning it over in his hands. The surface was completely smooth. It could've been anything -- a toy, a decoration, a tiny but deadly Ancient weapon.
Dumais nodded at it. "You need the gene if you want it to do something."
He said, "Gee, why didn't I think of that," and Dumais shrugged, turning back to her own bench. He clicked on his radio. "Dr Beckett, could you come down here and--"
"Not now, Rodney," Carson snapped, voice tight, "I'm in the middle of something." Which was obviously a lie, because what could be more important than assisting the physicists?
That was another problem with not being in charge. Not only did he get exiled -- yes, that was a better word for it, exiled -- to the same set of labs all day, he also had to deal with people disrespecting him. Rodney's new goal in life was to one day have minions who were terrified of him.
"You should get Sheppard to turn it on," Dumais said.
Rodney frowned. "Please don't tell me 'sheppard' is a euphemism for some Ancient device."
"No, Sheppard's a person. Tall guy." She gestured a good foot above her own head. "Dark hair. Looks like a surfer."
Rodney glanced around the lab to see if anyone fit that description. As far as he could tell, he was the tallest person in the room. "You're not developing some sort of-- of space madness, are you? Because I'm not in the mood to deal with other people's imaginary friends today."
"Nevermind," she sighed, going back to her own work.
Eventually, after he met Sheppard, he asked him to turn on the box. It opened like a flower and a little bell started chiming, and Rodney asked, "It's a music box?" and Sheppard said, "Wait, I think it's a metaphor for losing your virginity. Or something." But on that day, Rodney completely forgot about this Sheppard person who had apparently been bright enough to catch Dumais's attention. Dumais didn't fall for things like charm or good looks. It was why Rodney liked her; she was a scientist through and through.
The first two weeks flew by. Rodney, trapped in the labs, heard stories of what was going on around him: The soldiers were having problems off-world, thanks to Sumner's inability to treat people as anything other than a threat; someone found kitchens and open rooms with tables, so they had a place to eat, which was, in Rodney's opinion, probably one of the greatest discoveries they'd made thus far; some people found a landmass not too far from the city, which they named Atlantica; three gene-less Marines were killed after accidentally opening a door that triggered a self-defence system.
Carson told him, "I've made a gene therapy for the ATA gene. It doesn't work with everybody, of course, and it's not quite as strong as it is in people who've been born with the gene. I can bring the equipment up here, if you want me to do it to you."
"How many people have it so far?" Rodney asked. He liked the idea of being able to manipulate Ancient technology without asking anyone for help, but knowing his luck, he'd die horribly. "Any side-effects? You know I'm highly allergic to--"
Carson waved a hand. "Yes, Rodney, I know, you're allergic to everything. It's perfectly safe, I promise you. I've already given it to several military personnel, and no one's hand any negative reactions. Although--" He paused. "It doesn't work for everybody. Colonel Sumner's none too happy about that, let me tell you. He wants me to find a way for everyone to be able to interact with the city."
"That sounds more like something I should be working on," Rodney said, taking a big bite of a powerbar. "Obviously in a different capacity, since I'm a real scientist, and it's not like I don't have a million other things to do, but you'd think--"
"For God's sake, man, swallow before you talk," Carson said.
*
If Rodney was the kind of guy who looked backed critically, he might've said the step through the stargate was the moment his life changed forever. Without Atlantis, he might've spent his whole life as that arrogant, selfish loner who thought he was so smart, he nearly killed one of the few people he'd ever respected. He would never've known what it was like to love a city, or fly through space (which was something he never grew fond of; in space, no one can hear you scream), or take that first step onto an alien world. Worse, he might never've met the man he discovered standing in the centre of his lab, thumbing through Rodney's notepad. Every now and then, Rodney had strange dreams where he was an old man grading papers, or walking through a Moscow park on a bleak autumn day. They were painfully depressing.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Rodney demanded.
The guy didn't look guilty, like Rodney expected. Instead, he casually set the notepad back down on the bench, raising an eyebrow at Rodney's agitated state. Even when standing straight, he still slouched a little. "You shouldn't leave your stuff out if you don't want someone to look."
"That's why there are Marines with AK-47s guarding the door," Rodney fumed, gesturing behind him.
The man had gravity-defying hair, a hoop earring in each pointed ear, and a smirk on his face. His uniform looked like something he put together himself, a blatant disregard for regulations: tight blue t-shirt, baggy khakis, black wristband. He was disgustingly hot. Rodney felt something inside him stir, and he sneered, "Let me guess, you're one of the nurses."
"Botanist, actually," the guy said, raising both eyebrows this time. "Dr John Sheppard."
Rodney stared. "Ah, so the fabled Sheppard does exist." His gaze travelled from the tips of Sheppard's Nikes to the top of his spiky head. "You seriously have a doctorate?"
Sheppard looked amused. "My thesis was on tumbleweeds."
The lab doors swooshed open, and Zelenka entered, pushing up his glasses with the hand that wasn't clutching his datapad. "Ah, Rodney, Dr Sheppard, I see you've met. Good."
"Zelenka," Rodney demanded, "why are there botanists in my lab?"
"Dr Sheppard was the one to discover the transporters, completely by accident," Zelenka said, like that was supposed to mean something. He clasped Sheppard's shoulder, and Sheppard smirked at Rodney again.
Rodney waited for more of an explanation. When it didn't come, he asked, "So? Is that supposed to impress me? What the hell are transporters?" Both Zelenka and Sheppard looked at him in surprise. "What? I'm not allowed to leave this floor, except to eat and occasionally sleep. Personally, I think Sumner feels threatened by me. You blow up one star, and suddenly everyone thinks you're a loose cannon."
Sheppard seemed a little concerned. "Uh, transporters are those things in the halls that we thought were closets. Turns out they're a quicker way to get from floor to floor."
"So I've been walking up and down five flights of stairs every day for nothing?" Rodney asked, scowling at Zelenka.
"You have been looking more fit lately," Zelenka said pleasantly.
"God, I hate you," Rodney said.
"I'm sure I will cry myself to sleep tonight. For now, Rodney, what I need you to do is take Dr Sheppard to the lower fifth level. There are a series of doors no one can get open. John is..." Zelenka made a vague gesture. "I do not know how to say it."
Rodney looked at Sheppard, who grinned. "Strongest gene in Atlantis," he boasted, doing jazz hands.
"Yes, I'm sure it impresses all the ladies." But even as he said it, Rodney remembered he'd seen Sheppard before, in the command chair in Antarctica. Oh, life was so unfair. Rodney had seen what his own personal hell was like, and its name was McMurdo. He pestered and lectured and casually informed everyone there that he was the foremost expert in Ancient technology (and not to mention the smartest man on Earth), but they stuck him doing catalogue work with an also-wasted Peter Grodin. It was impossible to enjoy poking and prodding Ancient gizmos when the chair was clear on the other side of the base.
"I should be the one working on the command chair," he told Grodin, "not that scatter-brained Ukranian."
"Zelenka's Czech, actually," Grodin said. He pulled the latex glove off his right hand and stabbed the elongated Ancient device with his bare pointer finger.
Rodney sighed, irritated. "Who cares what he is? I'm just saying that if I was in charge, we'd be in Atlantis by now. And stop poking that! You don't even know what it is!"
"Doesn't it look like a sperm to you?" Grodin asked.
"Well, it does now," Rodney said, squinting.
He was far, far away when Zelenka finally discovered the person who made the command chair work the way it was supposed to. Rodney always thought it was Carson -- he figured the man's bitching and moaning about not being able to work anything was just tragic self-esteem issues -- or some nameless, stupid military buffoon Sumner was holding as a secret weapon. But no, it was a fellow scientist, which stung.
"This will be the only time you ever hear this from me, but... why me? Wouldn't he be better off with some Marines, or at least someone less important?" Rodney asked suspiciously.
"Yeah," Sheppard agreed, "why him?"
Zelenka smiled smugly. "Because Rodney annoys me with his meddling, and Dr Sheppard annoys me with his jokes and his skateboard, so I think, it is best you annoy each other."
Rodney glowered at Sheppard. "Skateboard? Aren't you, like, thirty-five?"
"I asked if I could bring a ferris wheel, but they said it'd be too big to fit through the gate," Sheppard drawled.
*
"I don't have time for this," Rodney grumbled. He was right in the middle of figuring out how to stretch the single ZPM to power the entire city. He had to fix some of the consoles in the control room Grodin hadn't been able to get working. He had to send some people to check out if they could get the shields back up, because God knew Zelenka wasn't going to, and Kavanagh and Simpson wanted to take apart one of the gatejumpers. He was a busy, busy man, too busy to babysit some immature botanist who apparently hadn't gotten the memo he was in his thirties.
Sheppard frowned. "Yeah, I have work of my own, you know. We're trying to see if we can get one of the Ancient greenhouses working again--"
"Oh, greenhouses," Rodney said, "we're not wasting our ZPM on that."
"--So we won't starve to death," Sheppard finished, scowling.
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to expend some energy," Rodney said grumpily.
The doors no one -- supposedly -- could get open were keeping them from entering an entire block of the city. Rodney was extremely annoyed Zelenka had decided he, of all people, was best suited for this, especially since Sheppard's gene was apparently super enough to power the whole damn city, or something.
He was still clenching his teeth when Sheppard gave him a sneaky sideways glance. "Some of the soldiers have these things that look like tri-corders. They call them life signs detectors."
Rodney choked. "Life si--? What's the point of bringing along scientists if the military's keeping everything for themselves? Christ." He glared at Sheppard -- and even though logically he knew none of this was Sheppard's fault, he hated him anyway -- who just shrugged, looking completely at ease walking through the empty corridors. "What's with you, anyway? Shouldn't you be talking my ear off about potatoes, or beans, or whatever?"
"The first rule of botany is you don't talk about botany," Sheppard said easily.
They walked across a skywalk, which showed a vast expanse of blue sky and green ocean. It took Rodney a few moments to realize Sheppard had paused in front of the window. "I always wanted to be a pilot," Sheppard said.
"Yeah?" Rodney asked absently, not particularly interesting in hearing Sheppard's personal life story.
"Yeah," Sheppard replied. "But I got caught smoking weed too many times in high school. Luckily, that doesn't affect this job much."
"Er," Rodney said. "Should you be telling me this?"
"Why, you gonna tell Zelenka?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "Ha, yeah right. You know, I always wanted to be a pianist, but I was told I have no heart for it." Rodney glanced over his shoulder. Sheppard was still staring out the window with a strangely serious expression on his face. "How'd you go from tumbleweeds to xenobotany, anyway?"
"My old man's in the army," Sheppard said lightly. "I was working in the non-profit sector, but this seemed a lot cooler."
Rodney knew that for a botanist, "non-profit sector" meant "environmental terrorism." But Sheppard would never tell Rodney that before the military, he worked for the Rainforest Action Network, for whom he taught a "direct action training camp." His specialty was teaching anyone, no matter what shape or age, how to climb a tree and throw things at bulldozers. He was known in certain circles for his love of the earth, his ability to make government officials nervous just by smirking, and his quality weed. In the late 90's, his father the general surprised him by bailing him out after being arrested in a WTO protest.
"Listen, Johnny," General Sheppard said, "you're wasting your life doing this environmental shit. I know some people--"
"I'm not working for the enemy," John said, but his heart wasn't in it. They'd had this conversation almost as many times as they'd had the "why don't you just try dating girls?" one.
"You'll get to go to alien planets."
"I-- what?" Sheppard twisted in his seat to look at his father, who didn't take his eyes off the road. "Now you're just making things up."
General Sheppard gave John a sideways glance. "Son, I shouldn't be telling you this, because you don't have clearance, but I have it on good authority this project -- the one with the aliens -- is looking for outdoorsy people who have degrees in science. And these folks just happen to owe me a lot of favours. I know it's not as interesting as saving the rainforest, but..."
"Uh," Sheppard said. He bit his lip. He crossed his arms over his chest, then uncrossed them. "Can I have a few days to think it over?"
A flip of a coin later, he was working for the SGC. Another flip, he was in Atlantis.
In the city, Rodney was mentally calculating the best way to divide power so as to get the lights in the entire city working, because the second they stepped off the skywalk, the tower was dark and drafty. Rodney turned on his flashlight. A layer of dust had settled over everything in the room they were in, which looked somewhat like a lesser control room; in the middle of it was a pedestal, and by the door sat a console with a series of knobs and buttons.
"What's this do?" Sheppard asked, and immediately touched the console.
"Are you retarded?" Rodney snapped. "Don't touch anything!"
Sheppard looked annoyed. "I'm here to--"
The little light there was faded to nothing, and for an instant, everything went pitch-black. Rodney froze, heart pounding. Slowly, soft pinks and yellows started shining from a pedestal in the centre of the room. Rodney glanced at Sheppard's face; he also looked shocked and scared.
"Sheppard," Rodney said, "if we die, I'm going to spend the rest of eternity kicking your ass."
A hologram of a middle-aged man in robes appeared in from the top of the pedestal. Rodney felt himself relax slightly -- but then the hologram looked directly into his eyes, and he swallowed a wave of panic. The open doors behind them slammed shut, locking them in the room.
"Welcome to the Chamber of Secrets," the hologram said.
"You've got to be kidding me," Rodney said. "JK Rowling is no Ancient."
"Why do the Ancients speak English?" Sheppard asked after a moment.
"I asked somebody at the SGC once," Rodney said. "I never got a straight answer."
The hologram flickered a few times. Its Ancient form had no facial expression. "You have two minutes to answer three riddles. If they are answered correctly, all the doors in the tower will be unlocked."
"Cool," Sheppard said.
"If they are answered incorrectly, you will die."
"Suck," Sheppard said, biting his lip.
Rodney glared at Sheppard. "I don't even know you, but already I can tell, this could only happen to us."
"First riddle. You have two thermoses. The first contains a litre of milk, the second contains a litre of pure chocolate syrup. You pour one cup of milk out from the first thermos to the second one. Then, after mixing that, you take one cup of the mixture from the second thermos, and pour it back into the first thermos. After completing these two operations, which thermos is more pure?"
Rodney stared, slack jawed. "What? Chocolate milk? What?"
"Answer the riddle, McKay," Sheppard warned.
"I can't believe-- hey, do you think they have chocolate in Pegasus?" he asked hopefully. "Because my supply's running low already, and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without it -- not that I think we'll be here indefinitely, but it's a good idea to plan ahead. God, what I wouldn't do for a glass of chocolate milk right now."
Sheppard growled, "Hurry up, we only have ninety seconds and two more questions left!"
"Whatever," Rodney said with a wave of his hand. "Clearly both are equally pure. But now I want chocolate milk. Thanks a lot, Atlantis."
"We're going to die," Sheppard said gravely.
"Next riddle," the hologram cut in. It looked directly at Rodney again. Of course. "A traveller, on his way to a certain village, reaches a road junction, where he can turn left or right. He knows that only one of the two roads leads to the village, but unfortunately, he does not know which one. Fortunately, he sees two twin brothers standing at the road junction, and he decides to ask them for directions. The traveller knows that one of the two brothers always tells the truth and the other one always lies. Unfortunately, he does not know which one always tells the truth and which one always lies. How can the traveller find out the way to the village by asking just one question to one of the two brothers?"
"I'm learning way more about the Ancients than I never wanted to know," Rodney said. "You'd just ask both of them if they know where the road leads to. The truthful one would say he knows, and the liar would have to make something up."
The screen flickered. This time the hologram looked at Sheppard. "I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I?"
"Easy," Sheppard said smugly. "A nose."
"What the hell?" Rodney asked.
The hologram flickered once more and went out.
"We," Sheppard said as the doors slid open, "are totally awesome."
*
That was the start of their partnership. Zelenka was delighted they were able to get the doors opened, which led to new and exciting places: more apartments, communal living spaces with something Simpson swore were broken Ancient flat-screen televisions, scientific laboratories with half-finished projects Carson shrieked at everyone not to touch. Rodney, Sheppard, and a few others cleared out some of the labs so people could start moving in. The zoologists were starting to get on Zelenka's case about physicists and engineers having preference, so Zelenka wanted to give them a handful of the new rooms to work in. Then Rodney told them if they wanted to be treated like equals, they should've picked a better science, and, well, some people were overly sensitive.
There were other discoveries, too: Rodney found he and Sheppard worked surprisingly well together. They didn't seem to have a lot in common (not that he could really tell; Sheppard liked to talk about places he'd been or things he'd seen, but nothing about his personal life either before or on Atlantis, which was perfectly fine with Rodney, because if there was one thing Rodney hated (other than citrus, Lucky beer, and people who couldn't apply Kepler's Laws), it was talking about feelings), but Sheppard was easy to talk to, and unlike most of the people in the city, he seemed to actually listen to what Rodney had to say. Most of the time, at least. The rest of the time he was purposely trying to be as annoying as possible.
Best of all, Sheppard never tried to talk to him about plants (unless he was intentionally trying to piss Rodney off, in which case there was no telling what boring fact he'd share with Rodney that day). Early in their friendship, Rodney told him, "I did well in Biology, but I hated it. If I so much as hear the word 'photosynthesis,' I become filled with an uncontrollable rage."
"You and Dr Sheppard do good work together," Zelenka said to Rodney one day. "I will admit I was worried the combined powers of your abrasiveness would create a black hole and swallow us whole. You are getting along, yes?"
"Mind your own business," Rodney said.
With Sheppard's wonder gene and Rodney's superior intellect, they managed to check out a few more floors without incidence. Rodney hated running. He hated stalking through dark hallways, breathing in air that'd been recycled over and over for a thousand years. He hated the idea that today could be the day he fucked up and got both of them killed. But whenever they opened a door, whenever he had to figure out some new way to make things work better, faster, something in him grew until he wanted to burst. He knew Sheppard loved it too. It was the two of them against the world, and they were winning.
Then Sumner caught on to what was happening.
"Dr Zelenka," Sumner said, "what's this I hear about you sending civilians to explore the city without a guard? I made myself very clear when I said the military needs to make sure all areas are clear before you will be allowed to move your people in."
Zelenka faltered, but he didn't back down. "Colonel, Dr McKay is one of the few experts on Ancient technology."
Sumner's head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes at Rodney, and Rodney was really glad he was on the other side of the briefing room. "Dr McKay, huh? The SGC told me about you. Said you're a troublemaker. And you--" He frowned at Sheppard. "I don't even know who you are."
"Dr John Sheppard," Sheppard said, slouching low in his seat. "Botanist."
"We've discovered more in the past few weeks than you have in months," Rodney said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You didn't seem to be in any hurry to check out the rest of the city," Sheppard added.
"They do have a point, Colonel," Dr Weir said, arching her brows. "Perhaps it's a sign we should be less strict with the regulations. Dr Sheppard has shown a remarkable ability to manipulate Ancient technology."
"We're cut off from Earth," Sumner said tightly, "regulations are all we have left."
Rodney expected to be sent back to the labs -- he had a whole speech prepared on how two hundred fifty people living on just a handful of floors in a tiny fraction of the city would probably drive someone (namely him) to mass murder -- but Dr Weir and Sumner broke out into a fight that ended with Sumner grudgingly allowing Rodney and Sheppard to continue with their work as long as they took at least one soldier with them. Weir and Zelenka looked victorious, Sumner looked pissed, and Sheppard looked like he was thinking about what to have for lunch.
*
"They say you're the smartest man in Atlantis."
"They're right," Rodney replied automatically.
He glanced up from his laptop to see Sumner standing in the doorway. This was, to Rodney's knowledge, the first time Sumner had ever visited. Normally he didn't drift far from the command room and the second floor armoury; he usually sent Bates to do his dirty work when it involved the scientists, probably because they shared the same disdain for civilians. Sumner didn't have patience for people who didn't know how to kill a man five different ways using only his bare hands. Zelenka once said he didn't think Sumner had patience for anybody, not even those who served under him.
"Can you make a ZPM?" Sumner asked.
It took Rodney a second to realize the man was serious. "Yes, but I'd been trying to keep it a secret. Looks like you've figured me out. Now if you'll just get me a spoon and a rubberband, I'll have one for you in no time. No, of course I don't know how to build a ZPM. Christ."
"Then what use are you?" Sumner asked, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "We have over a hundred scientists here, and all of you are useless."
"Fuck you," Rodney said.
Sumner's nostrils flared. He took a few threatening steps forward. "I'm sick and tired of you civilians not realizing the situation we're in."
"You mean the situation where we're stuck in another galaxy, isolated from Earth?" Rodney asked. "Because that's been completely lost on me."
The lab was completely silent. Rodney wasn't going to let some macho thug come in here like he owned the city and insult Rodney's people. He wasn't the one who reported to Sumner; as far as he was concerned, Sumner was just another guy who happened to live in Atlantis. Zelenka appeared behind Sumner in the door, holding his datapad. He looked up, did a double take, and turned right back around and kept walking.
Sumner didn't notice. "You think this is some sort of joke? First Dr Beckett claims he can't find a way to make the gene therapy a hundred percent successful, and now Dr Sheppard--" Rodney choked, but he bit his tongue so hard it hurt. "--says he can't get the weapons to work using the command chair."
Sumner said it like he didn't believe it. Rodney didn't either; he'd been witness to what Sheppard's gene could do.
"If they say they can't do, they can't do it," Rodney lied.
Sumner took a little more time to gripe about how no one ever listened to him. Rodney ignored him and pretended to go back to work, but the entire time he was wondering why Sheppard wouldn't use the chair; if it were him, he'd've been working on it from the first week. But even with Carson's gene therapy, the chair didn't respond to him very well (he'd already tried more than once). Carson, he knew, made sure to not even take a step near the command chair room -- apparently Zelenka had harassed him to sit in it in McMurdo, and it'd scared the shit out of him -- but Rodney couldn't understand why anyone with the ability to manipulate Ancient technology wouldn't want to use it. Sky was blue, grass was green, force equalled mass times acceleration, the universe was meant to be taken apart and understood.
The second Sumner took a step outside the door, Rodney turned to Dumais, who'd been sitting there quietly the whole time. "Do you remember Sheppard?" he asked. She blinked at him. "Tall guy, dark hair, looks like a-- actually, I tend to think of surfers as blond, so I guess it's more accurate to say he's a skateboarder, although--"
"Yeah," she interrupted. "I remember him."
"Do you know where I can find him?"
"I think the botany lab is right below ours," she said. "Dr Zelenka wanted everyone close together."
"Thanks." He started heading towards the door, then stopped. "If Zelenka asks for me, I'm double-checking the transporter repairs on the east tower." The east side was the farthest from the lab; if Zelenka came looking for Rodney, he'd have a few extra minutes.
Her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. "Right."
He found Sheppard where she said he would, burying a thin plastic tube under dirt that stood in what Rodney guessed were long, glass planting pots. Parallel to where he was planting, several other rows were sprouting tiny buds. Rodney hoped none of these would set off his allergies.
"There's a greenhouse in here," Rodney said instead of, "Hello."
"Really?" Sheppard deadpanned, looking around like he'd just realized where he was.
"I thought you were kidding earlier when you said you guys were trying to get the greenhouses working."
"Why would I lie about something like that?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "I don't know! I thought it was botany humour."
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "We have funnier jokes than that. What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?"
"No idea," Rodney said flatly.
"Pumpkin pi."
"You're hilarious. You should really think about giving up the plants and going on tour." He watched Sheppard pat the dirt flat with his long, thin hands, and he said, "The craziest thing happened just now. Sumner asked me if I could build a ZPM. I told him that if I could, did he really think we'd still be here?"
"We might," Sheppard said, smiling.
"Well, okay," Rodney said, "but like I'd keep people here who wanted to go home. I'm not some mad scientist trying to trap everyone in another galaxy. He also said--" Rodney waved his hand vaguely, hoping to convey casualness. "--you won't work the command chair."
"I'm not a soldier," Sheppard said, narrowing his eyes. "I came here to do research. I'll do it if we get in trouble, but..." He shrugged, and Rodney put the pieces together: Sheppard was an environmentalist. He was a tree hugger, a rainforest saver; he sighed every time they passed a dead, withered tree in the hall. Rodney'd never seen him throw anything away. He wasn't going to practice shooting up aliens for the hell of it.
Sheppard stood, brushing off his hands. Dirt stained the knees of his loose khakis. "You wanna get something to eat? I think it's taco night."
"Yeah, okay," Rodney said.
And so life went on. Sumner ordered Lieutenant Ford to act as Rodney's and Sheppard's bodyguard, and he followed them through the darkened corridors, P-90 held high against their invisible enemies. Together they found a gymnasium, another series of apartments, and even a place that resembled a café. Sheppard sprained his ankle trying to skateboard down a stairwell. Miko single-handedly figured out how to turn all the lights in the city on while using barely any power, much to Ford's relief (and Rodney's). Zelenka remained obtuse.
"Did you know we have deep space scanners?" Zelenka asked.
Rodney slowly looked up from his laptop. "Yes."
The first time Sheppard came by the main lab when everyone was there, Rodney was in the middle of yet another screaming match with Gall. He was telling Gall how he was going to convince the Marines to dial a random location and just leave Gall there to die, when he heard Kavanagh ask:
"Aren't you one of the botanists?" Rodney turned in time to see Kavanagh wrinkle his nose at Sheppard (who had definitely not been there a minute ago) like he'd just seen something distasteful. "I don't think you're allowed to be in here. Why don't you go back to your plants and leave the real scientists to their work?"
Rodney snapped, "Kavanagh, shouldn't you be working on getting the archiving programme uplinked? Oh, that's right, you couldn't figure it out. Why don't you go get one of the jarheads to teach you basic math?"
"Rodney," Sheppard said, but he didn't sound angry. "I thought you might want to get something in your system besides caffeine. You've been here for, like, twelve hours. Ford said it's meatloaf today, and I know how you love processed breaded meat."
Rodney didn't eat in the mess often; he was too busy to take half an hour off, so he typically brought MREs back to the labs. Powerbars were a staple amongst the physics staff. When he did manage to sit down and enjoy himself, he preferred to eat alone or just with Sheppard, unless it was one of those days everything Sheppard said and did annoyed the hell out of him. "Why do potatoes make good detectives?" was one of Sheppard's jokes. "Because they keep their eyes peeled!" Sometimes in the lab he sat down with Zelenka, but the way Zelenka ate reminded him too much of Russia. Once, not long after they arrived in Atlantis, he made the mistake of sitting with other physicists. By the time the meal was done, he was forcibly trying not to kill them all with his cutlery. In the end, it was best just to stick with what he knew: himself, and occasionally Sheppard.
"Yeah, just--" Rodney looked back at Gall, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. "You're still here? Go away."
"I'm going to tell Dr Zelenka you're skipping work to hang out with your buddy," Kavanagh sneered, gaze flickering between Rodney and Sheppard.
"What are you, twelve? Whatever." Rodney waved a hand in dismissal. "As if Zelenka would care."
Both Gall and Kavanagh stomped off, each muttering something that was probably obscene under their breaths, and God, how Rodney longed to be in charge of these Neanderthals, just so he could punish them. He said to Sheppard, "What an idiot. He doesn't even know you." One corner of Sheppard's mouth curled up, and Rodney looked away, embarrassed. "And Gall's just... ugh. Don't get me started on that imbecile. Do you know he had the audacity to suggest he might be smarter than me?"
"What a bastard," Sheppard agreed easily.
On an intellectual level, Rodney knew every scientist in Atlantis was hand-picked by Zelenka, even Kavanagh. Even Sheppard. They were Earth's best and brightest. But the emotional part of Rodney was compiling a list of People I'm Trying to Give Cancer to With My Mind, and Kavanagh and Gall had been at the top of that list ever since McMurdo.
Rodney would almost feel bad about that when Gall would get killed during a botched diplomatic incident between Atlantis and the primitive people of Mauron (Rodney would always think it was ironic Gall died on a planet that sounded so close to "moron"). Sergeant Bates's team stumbled across his body less than a kilometre away from the gate.
"That's a shame," said one of Bates's teammates as they pulled Gall out of the bushes. Nobody liked Gall.
The official cause of his death was "allergic reaction to the mead he ingested at the welcoming ceremony," Dr Biro informed Rodney and Zelenka, snapping off her gloves.
"It's a wonder I'm still alive," Rodney said. He was forty-nine.
Kavanagh's last words to Rodney would be, "I told you that was lethal."
One time after a long day of fixing other people's mistakes, Rodney came into the lab to pick up his laptop, and he found a note taped to it. It was written on formal stationary.
Dr McKay,
In your latest report regarding damaged dampeners on Gatejumper 4, you had several spelling and punctuation errors. Please see that you use spellcheck in your future reports. We do not want the entirety of the physics team to be embarrassed when the SGC rescues us. Also, please stop stealing my pens. I paid for them myself.
Sincerely,
Dr Kavanagh
In Rodney's next report, he made sure to misspell as many words as possible while still being coherent. Then he stole half of Kavanagh's pens and passed them out to the senior staff. Zelenka looked at him funny for a few days after that, but all Rodney would do was smirk at him. Kavanagh never said anything; if anything, Kavanagh just grew colder towards him, which suited him just fine. He didn't need friends -- he had Atlantis.
Kavanagh would remain on Atlantis for the rest of his days, eventually giving up on being "rescued" by the SGC. He and Rodney tried to avoid working together as much as humanly possible; the longest conversation they ever had after the third year was saying hello when they passed each other in the hallways.
A few years after they arrived on Atlantis, Kavanagh, Simpson, and Brown were caught trying to repair the bubbling tanks on the walls. They started with one tower everyone considered too far to bother with; Brown had the great idea of turning the tubes into fish tanks, and she smuggled in fish and plants while Simpson worked on the mechanics. No one remembered how Kavanagh got involved, but he was the one who brought in the purple frog-like creature from Atlantica -- which turned out to be highly toxic, and was probably the way rebellious Ancient teenagers used to get high. He was found wandering the halls tripped out his mind, mumbling about, "I understand everything now; the universe is inside me." Simpson said that it was totally worth it, even after Zelenka, Biro, and Weir all yelled at them for sneaking in strange wildlife without clearing it first. Sheppard said the tanks were just a front for the frog-licking, and then he whined for two weeks that he would've been invited if Rodney hadn't ruined his reputation.
When Kavanagh announced Sheppard's presence in the lab, Rodney didn't notice he wasn't the only one observing Sheppard. It took him a few minutes to realize a few -- okay, pretty much all -- of the women were looking at Sheppard like he was made of every food they ever missed from Earth. Even Dumais was staring, still leaning over her bench, a screwdriver in one hand. He'd never seen that expression on her face before. Simpson and Miko were whispering behind their hands in the corner.
Rodney bristled and put a hand on Sheppard's back, steering him towards the door. "Come on, let's go before they start fighting over who gets to bear your love child."
Sheppard craned his neck. "What? Who? What?"
"I knew I should've taken botany," he heard Simpson say. Miko "mm-hmm"-ed enthusiastically.
"The asshole with the ponytail was playing Bejeweled on his laptop," Sheppard said.
"Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints," Rodney murmured.
*
Their fifth month in Pegasus, Sumner and Weir began making deals with other civilizations. Privately, Zelenka told Rodney it was something Weir'd wanted to do from the start, once they'd realized they couldn't go back to Earth, but Sumner had refused to send his troops on "suicide missions" to trade with "heathens," even though the six or seven planets they'd been to had various levels of sophistication.
"What an enlightened man," Rodney said sarcastically. "Next you'll be telling me he thinks a woman's place should be in the kitchen."
It wasn't so much they were running out of supplies as it was people were starting to worry about running out of supplies. Carson was telling anyone who'd listen he was almost out of this and that antibiotic, and something about clean syringes, and if Sumner wanted him to find a way to make everyone on Atlantis able to carry the gene, they best start seeing which planets carried what he needed. More importantly, people started to talk about how maybe, just maybe, some other worlds just might have ZPMs. Ones they'd be willing to part with.
Zelenka said this time, Weir told Sumner she'd go alone if he didn't give her a squadron of Marines. "She's a very brave woman," he said, with stars in his eyes. Rodney tried to point out Weir usually caved to whatever Sumner wanted, but Zelenka acted as if the comment personally offended him.
Sheppard hopped up on Rodney's lab bench, looking pleased with himself, which was never a good thing. He sat on top of several print-outs Rodney was reading. "Guess what."
"Judging by your good mood, I'd guess someone found a surplus supply of hair gel."
"They're going to start sending scientists with the offworld teams," Sheppard answered, ignoring Rodney's comment. He was practically humming with excitement. "Lieutenant Ford asked me to be on his."
It took a minute for that to sink in. Rodney demanded, "Are you nuts? Haven't you ever seen an episode of Star Trek? Scientists always die on away missions."
"So I won't wear my red shirt," Sheppard drawled. "Seriously, McKay, it'll be cool. It's some peaceful farming planet."
"They're always peaceful farming planets!" Rodney exclaimed, waving his arms. "Do you even know how to shoot a gun?"
Sheppard gave him a look. "My dad was in the army."
"What does that mean? Yes? No?"
"It means..." Sheppard picked at a string on the hem of his blue t-shirt. "I can shoot cans with a rifle."
Rodney threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, okay, Rambo, that changes everything."
Sheppard glared. "Can't you be happy for me? I get to go exploring alien worlds. Imagine all the species of plants that are probably completely different from anything on Earth. We might be able to find something that can feed us for months."
"They could bring samples back for you," Rodney said. "Parrish or what's-her-face, the redhead-- don't look at me like that, I barely know the names of people I work with. One of them could go instead. Why you?"
"Parrish gets lost going from the greenhouse to the bathroom, and Katie-- you'd seriously prefer they sent Katie Brown to a possibly hostile alien world over me?"
"Ha," Rodney said smugly, "you just admitted it was hostile."
"Ford said it was perfectly safe," Sheppard said, stepping off the bench and back onto the floor.
What Ford actually said was, "Hey, man, how do you feel about kicking some alien ass?" and, "Sumner told me to take a scientist, and I thought you'd might like to go. But just to warn you, it'll probably be dangerous." Sheppard was all cool and collected when he told Rodney about it, but he was pretty much scared out of his mind. The most danger he'd ever been in were protests that turned violent (and that one time in Greenpeace when he'd chased a whaling boat for six hours off the coast of China) and even then, injuries were something to use against The Man, to demonstrate the barbaric behaviour of the cops or coast guard or whoever was keeping them down this week. The closest he'd ever come to war was listening to his father's stories, and they weren't even very good. When Sheppard was a kid, he thought his dad was so brave, but then he grew up and realized his dad was sort of an asshole. An asshole who didn't recycle.
Of course, Rodney didn't know any of this. He just thought Sheppard must've been missing the part of his brain that handled self-preservation.
For the next two days, Sheppard didn't show up to bug him. At first Rodney thought maybe Sheppard was actually doing work for once; but after day two rolled around and there was still no sign of the man, he told himself he was just glad Sheppard wasn't there to annoy him, because Sheppard would've just distracted Rodney from fixing the yet-again broken sewage system. But still, he looked over his shoulder every time someone walked past the lab.
There was only so much self-denial he could stand. Around six in the evening, he snapped his laptop closed and said to Zelenka, "I'm going on a break."
Zelenka's hair was sticking up straight, and with his wide eyes, he looked kind of insane. His jaw dropped, and he asked suspiciously, "Break? You never take break."
"I need a cigarette like you wouldn't believe," Rodney called over his shoulder.
"You don't smoke!" Zelenka shouted after him.
That whole conversation would later come back to haunt Rodney, as someone from the labs began spreading rumours he was running an underground black market. In one instance, Vogel would try to con Rodney into trading his bed sheets for cigarettes (Rodney really, really didn't want to know). Miko would want extra toothpaste for Hershey's kisses. Ford would try to trade him coffee for spare condoms, and on four separate occasions, chocolate syrup.
"There are no words to describe how TMI that is," Rodney would say.
Rodney bumped into Sheppard coming off the transporter. He was wearing the black jacket and BDUs of the soldiers. "Hey," Sheppard said, surprised.
"Hey," Rodney replied.
"Were you looking for me?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "Oh, were you gone?"
Sheppard grinned like Rodney had made a joke. But he just said, "Ford's had me doing target practice all day. I think I've got the hang of it."
"You're going to fucking die," Rodney said.
"We might find coffee beans," Sheppard said, rolling his eyes. "Then you'll tell me this was the best idea Ford ever had."
Rodney thought he'd probably prefer having Sheppard alive over having an endless supply of alien coffee (even though he'd probably be able to jerk off to the image of a freshly-brewed pot of Columbian by this point), but he wasn't stupid enough to tell Sheppard that. Especially when Sheppard was wearing all black and looking a little sweaty.
On the morning of Sheppard's first mission, Rodney woke up early and headed to Ford's rooms. The day before, he'd bribed Lieutenant Crown, whom he'd seen flirting with Ford, to tell him where Ford lived. It cost him a bag of Twizzlers. Ford was in a section of the city Sheppard and Rodney had cleared out themselves, before Sumner'd found out about their exploits; as he walked down the corridor, Rodney remembered these same light panels on the walls coming to life as Sheppard crossed their paths. He remembered Sheppard gazing out the huge window in the centre of the hall, telling Rodney, "I don't think we'll ever be able to learn everything about Atlantis, do you?"
Ford opened his door in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. "McKay? What're you doing here?"
"I need to give you some important information about your mission today," he said.
"Yeah?" Ford asked apprehensively.
"Dr Sheppard's always cold, so you should take an extra sweater," Rodney said. He ticked the list off on his fingers. "Uh, he gets lost really easily, so don't let him wander away. I don't need to remind you he doesn't have any combat training, so I'll assume you won't let him get shot in the face. He doesn't follow orders, so you might have to threaten him. He--"
Ford was staring at him like he was in the process of trying to explain quantum mechanics. It was a nervous, flighty look, but he didn't know if Ford was thinking taking Sheppard along was a mistake, or if Rodney himself made Ford anxious, or what. "McKay, chill, it's okay. I know what I'm doing. Johnny--" And oh, how that nickname cracked Rodney up every time. "--will be fine. I'll bring him back to you in one piece."
"See to it that you do," Rodney sniffed.
"I have an hour before I have to get up," Ford said, stepping back.
"Don't forget--" The door slid shut. "--The sweater!"
When he went back to his rooms to get his laptop, he found Sheppard there, knocking on the door. He was already dressed in black BDUs, looking calm and cool. "Almost time for me to head out," he said casually.
"Is it?" Rodney asked.
"I'll be okay," Sheppard said. "It's no big deal. Ford's been off-world a bunch of times already, and nothing really bad's happened."
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "You realize you're jinxing yourself, right?"
Sheppard stepped forward until they could almost brush arms, and Rodney swallowed thickly. "I wanted to tell you..." Sheppard licked his lips. "What vegetable can tie your stomach in knots?"
"Oh my God," Rodney said.
"String beans." With that, Sheppard spun on one heel and walked away, throwing Rodney a grin over his shoulder.
"I hope you get stabbed by a native," Rodney shouted at his back.
Rodney stayed in the labs the rest of the day, but he managed to time being in the gateroom when he knew Ford's team was supposed to return, claiming he was helping Grodin configure the scanners.
"I don't think they're broken, McKay," Grodin said.
"Of course that's what you'd think, wouldn't you," Rodney said, pretending to be looking at something. Thankfully, he typed faster than Grodin could read.
When Sheppard walked through the gate, Rodney let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Sheppard had a smudge on one cheek and a stupid grin on his face. In his arms was a basket of something that looked like corn. Ford slapped him on the back, saying something Rodney couldn't hear from the balcony, and they laughed together. Something uncurled in Rodney's chest.
Sheppard looked up, met Rodney's eyes, and waved. "I shot somebody," he shouted, sounding excited. "It was pretty awesome!"
"You're insane," Rodney yelled back, leaning over the rail. The soldier beside him recoiled a little.
On Sheppard's third mission, he went from being the shooter to the shootee. Ford, Parker, Stankovich, and Sheppard were negotiating with the farmers of P1X-436 for their grain when the local lord whipped out a gun and fired. Rodney was in the lab telling Gall exactly why he was the stupidest man in the Pegasus Galaxy when his radio sparked to life.
"McKay," Ford's voice said, "you might want to head over to the infirmary."
Rodney went cold all over. "I told you not to let him get shot in the face!"
Gall stood between Rodney and the door. He sneered, "Isn't it convenient you have an excuse to leave just as I was winning the argument."
"Get the fuck out of my way," Rodney snapped.
When he got to the infirmary in record time, only a little out of breath, he found Sheppard lying on one of the beds, Carson "tsk"-ing him. Sheppard's BDU pants were dripping with blood.
"I got shot, Rodney," Sheppard told him. "In the leg."
"Good for you," Rodney said.
Carson started to cut off John's pants with a pair of tiny scissors. "Okay, Dr Sheppard, I'm just going to give you a local anaesthetic, and we're going to get that nasty bullet out."
Sheppard patted Rodney's hand. He was either drunk or he'd lost a lot of blood. "Guns are bad. I feel bad now for shooting that guy on P2X-381. It hurts like a bitch."
"Should you be doing that out here in the open?" Rodney asked Carson. "He's going to get an infection and his leg's going to fall off. We can't have a one-legged botanist. That's just a whole new level of weird I don't think anyone's prepared to deal with."
Carson let out an exasperated breath. "And where do you purpose I do it then? It's not like we've found an Ancient operating room. I've been making due with what's available." He said this with surprising vehemence. His face a little more lined than it'd been when they walked through the gate a few months ago.
"Rodney and I will find you a real infirmary," Sheppard said to Carson.
"You just worry about getting better," Carson soothed.
It was so like Carson to fall for Sheppard's charms like that. If Rodney had promised to find him a lab, Carson would've "accidentally" stabbed him with those scissors. Rodney glared at Sheppard, taking in his pale face, his open, bleeding wound, and Rodney suddenly felt light-headed.
"I should go," he said, jerking a thumb to the door behind him. "Important things to do, idiots all around me, and so forth and so on."
Carson didn't even look up from the syringe he was filling. "That's probably a good idea. Wouldn't want you to get sick on us."
Rodney spent the rest of the day (silently) fretting over Sheppard being one step away from death, even after he radioed Carson and had to listen to Carson say, "No, Rodney, his leg is still here. Yes, Rodney, the bullet's removed, and he's recovering nicely. No, Rodney, I will not stop being a smart ass. Go back to work, you bloody woman." It was only natural for him to be concerned about his friend. He took out his stress the best way he knew how: by terrorizing everyone around him. It worked up until the point when he found out exactly what happened on the mission.
"The Lieutenant said Dr Sheppard was accused of flirting with the leader's daughter," Zelenka said, rolling his eyes. "Then Lieutenant Ford tried to explain Sheppard is like that with everyone, and it seems the people of P1X-436 find such behaviour, um--"
"Slutty?" Rodney asked.
"I was going to say 'distasteful,' but that works," Zelenka replied. "But that is why they shot him. Apparently, that is the standard punishment on their world. I find it interesting these people do not have indoor plumbing, yet they possess the ability to blow off people's legs."
Rodney said, "Sheppard, that stupid fuck. I hope he gets space syphilis and his dick rots."
Zelenka raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn't say anything. Rodney turned back to his laptop, fuming.
[ Part Two]
Title: The Roads Never Lead Where They're Supposed to Go [AO3]
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~23,000 words
Spoilers: 1x01/02 Rising, 1x10 The Storm.
Warnings: This fic does not have anything in it that requires a warning. Hopefully.
Summary:
For the B-Movie Ficathon Challenge: A brilliant geneticist plans to expose a lethal virus to every human being on the planet. Her objective: to destroy humankind in favour of her new strain of prehistoric dinosaurs. Two people stand in the way of her diabolical plan, a cynical night watchman and a lovely idealistic environmentalist. The two must overcome their differences long enough to uncover the scientist's scheme and fight her carnivorous creations in a desperate battle against the extinction of the human race.
In other words: A slightly different John and Rodney, in a slightly different Atlantis, fight Marines, dinosaurs, and each other. Alternate Universe. McKay/Sheppard, Elizabeth/Zelenka.
Podfic by reena_jenkins can be found here!
*
When Radek Zelenka was thirty-four, he won some sort of European award for some kind of incredible, astounding mathematical feat. Rodney McKay knew this, but it didn't make him resent Zelenka any less. When Rodney was thirty-four, he blew up a star and nearly killed Major Carter, which was why, he was told by a smug General Hammond, Zelenka was asked to lead the Atlantis Expedition instead of him.
"Oh, that's just great," Rodney said, "absolutely perfect. And what exactly am I supposed to do while someone stupider than me gets to do all the fun stuff and win all the Nobel prizes?"
He should've thanked his lucky stars he'd been allowed to go at all, the SGC said. They just wanted him as far away from Earth as possible. In fact, they hoped he died tragically, from hostile aliens, equipment malfunctions, or even accidental lemon ingestion.
But he couldn't be too outraged because Atlantis was-- well. Atlantis. Lost city of the motherfucking Ancients. There were databases and computers and unbelievably advanced technology and spaceships. Sure, they'd fucked up and assumed there'd be an extra ZPM just lying around, and Colonel Sumner was a son-of-a-bitch without a sense of humour who'd probably snap and kill them all, and everyone was terrified out of their minds -- but this was the most amazing thing Rodney'd ever been part of.
Rodney was in the majority; most of the scientists spent the first few weeks downright giddy. Some of them, like Vogel, even cried with joy when they found the laboratories intact. It was the Marines who were frightened. Sumner was quick to remind everyone Atlantis was a military base (and Rodney was just as quick to remind him that no, it really wasn't), and they were far from home without any allies. But Zelenka's reaction was more along the lines of the soldiers; he was so excited at first -- he practically jumped up and down and shrieked like a girl when Rodney and Groden showed him the gatejumpers -- but some time between the city rising and Sumner stepping through the wormhole to announce they'd been unwelcomed by the natives of whatever that planet was, Rodney took one look at Zelenka's ashen face and thought, "This isn't going to work." Of course, Rodney was fighting his own hysteria at the time, but Zelenka hastily retreated and left Rodney to do all the work. Just as it should be.
*
Within a week, Rodney was confined to the main laboratories. That's what they called it: "confined."
"And by 'confined to the labs,'" he said, "you mean, 'having complete access to Atlantis,' right? Because only an idiot would restrict an astrophysicist with a specialty in alien technology to the only area of the city without anything left to discover."
Two of the three soldiers looked uncomfortable. The other one, Sergeant Bates, simply narrowed his eyes. The look on his face said, "I hate civilians."
"Colonel Sumner's orders," he said flatly.
The other two men were Lieutenant Ford and Sergeant Markham. It took almost six months for Rodney to find out Ford was the one who named the gatejumpers. He was a nice kid -- as nice as anyone who loved blowing the shit out of things and killing people could be -- from somewhere in the midwestern United States; he was probably the soldier Rodney spoke to the most, considering Ford's choice of friends (and the female civilians he was constantly hitting on). When they walked through the stargate for the first time, the city dark until someone with the gene activated the lights, Ford started humming the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ford once asked Rodney if they had any black people in Canada. On his tour, he'd been every where from Japan to Germany, but he'd never been to his neighbour to the north. He never would, either; Ford lived to be an old man with a red-headed wife, six kids, and a farm on one of the Genii planets. His kids called Rodney "Uncle Rod." Markham, on the other hand, died in a freak accident in the south side of the city within the first five years of their arrival. The only thing Rodney knew about him was that his one personal item was a beat-up basketball.
So Rodney was stuck in the labs. He was sure Zelenka didn't bother to fight Sumner's orders; after all, he was the competition, right? He'd been to grad school, he knew how these things worked. Rodney was able to convince a few of the Marines to secretly bring him anything they found that was portable, and, being the eager lemmings they were, they brought him crate after crate of strange, misshapen Ancient artifacts, most of which didn't even work.
Most of the crates were filled entirely with objects that would only turn on with the gene. Unfortunately, Sumner liked to pair up people with the gene with people with guns, which didn't leave many ATA-inclined individuals left in the labs. Besides, not many of the physicists had the gene to begin with, although an unusually high proportion of the soldiers did.
Rodney pulled a sleek, silver box out of one of the crates a young Marine had dropped off earlier. It fit in the palm of his hand. Dumais stared at him in her intense, quiet way, until he snapped, "What?"
"I don't think it's a good idea to go around touching things," she said.
"Really?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "And just how many Marines died to bring us this? Oh wait, that's right, none. I know what I'm doing, Doctor."
He inspected the box, turning it over in his hands. The surface was completely smooth. It could've been anything -- a toy, a decoration, a tiny but deadly Ancient weapon.
Dumais nodded at it. "You need the gene if you want it to do something."
He said, "Gee, why didn't I think of that," and Dumais shrugged, turning back to her own bench. He clicked on his radio. "Dr Beckett, could you come down here and--"
"Not now, Rodney," Carson snapped, voice tight, "I'm in the middle of something." Which was obviously a lie, because what could be more important than assisting the physicists?
That was another problem with not being in charge. Not only did he get exiled -- yes, that was a better word for it, exiled -- to the same set of labs all day, he also had to deal with people disrespecting him. Rodney's new goal in life was to one day have minions who were terrified of him.
"You should get Sheppard to turn it on," Dumais said.
Rodney frowned. "Please don't tell me 'sheppard' is a euphemism for some Ancient device."
"No, Sheppard's a person. Tall guy." She gestured a good foot above her own head. "Dark hair. Looks like a surfer."
Rodney glanced around the lab to see if anyone fit that description. As far as he could tell, he was the tallest person in the room. "You're not developing some sort of-- of space madness, are you? Because I'm not in the mood to deal with other people's imaginary friends today."
"Nevermind," she sighed, going back to her own work.
Eventually, after he met Sheppard, he asked him to turn on the box. It opened like a flower and a little bell started chiming, and Rodney asked, "It's a music box?" and Sheppard said, "Wait, I think it's a metaphor for losing your virginity. Or something." But on that day, Rodney completely forgot about this Sheppard person who had apparently been bright enough to catch Dumais's attention. Dumais didn't fall for things like charm or good looks. It was why Rodney liked her; she was a scientist through and through.
The first two weeks flew by. Rodney, trapped in the labs, heard stories of what was going on around him: The soldiers were having problems off-world, thanks to Sumner's inability to treat people as anything other than a threat; someone found kitchens and open rooms with tables, so they had a place to eat, which was, in Rodney's opinion, probably one of the greatest discoveries they'd made thus far; some people found a landmass not too far from the city, which they named Atlantica; three gene-less Marines were killed after accidentally opening a door that triggered a self-defence system.
Carson told him, "I've made a gene therapy for the ATA gene. It doesn't work with everybody, of course, and it's not quite as strong as it is in people who've been born with the gene. I can bring the equipment up here, if you want me to do it to you."
"How many people have it so far?" Rodney asked. He liked the idea of being able to manipulate Ancient technology without asking anyone for help, but knowing his luck, he'd die horribly. "Any side-effects? You know I'm highly allergic to--"
Carson waved a hand. "Yes, Rodney, I know, you're allergic to everything. It's perfectly safe, I promise you. I've already given it to several military personnel, and no one's hand any negative reactions. Although--" He paused. "It doesn't work for everybody. Colonel Sumner's none too happy about that, let me tell you. He wants me to find a way for everyone to be able to interact with the city."
"That sounds more like something I should be working on," Rodney said, taking a big bite of a powerbar. "Obviously in a different capacity, since I'm a real scientist, and it's not like I don't have a million other things to do, but you'd think--"
"For God's sake, man, swallow before you talk," Carson said.
*
If Rodney was the kind of guy who looked backed critically, he might've said the step through the stargate was the moment his life changed forever. Without Atlantis, he might've spent his whole life as that arrogant, selfish loner who thought he was so smart, he nearly killed one of the few people he'd ever respected. He would never've known what it was like to love a city, or fly through space (which was something he never grew fond of; in space, no one can hear you scream), or take that first step onto an alien world. Worse, he might never've met the man he discovered standing in the centre of his lab, thumbing through Rodney's notepad. Every now and then, Rodney had strange dreams where he was an old man grading papers, or walking through a Moscow park on a bleak autumn day. They were painfully depressing.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Rodney demanded.
The guy didn't look guilty, like Rodney expected. Instead, he casually set the notepad back down on the bench, raising an eyebrow at Rodney's agitated state. Even when standing straight, he still slouched a little. "You shouldn't leave your stuff out if you don't want someone to look."
"That's why there are Marines with AK-47s guarding the door," Rodney fumed, gesturing behind him.
The man had gravity-defying hair, a hoop earring in each pointed ear, and a smirk on his face. His uniform looked like something he put together himself, a blatant disregard for regulations: tight blue t-shirt, baggy khakis, black wristband. He was disgustingly hot. Rodney felt something inside him stir, and he sneered, "Let me guess, you're one of the nurses."
"Botanist, actually," the guy said, raising both eyebrows this time. "Dr John Sheppard."
Rodney stared. "Ah, so the fabled Sheppard does exist." His gaze travelled from the tips of Sheppard's Nikes to the top of his spiky head. "You seriously have a doctorate?"
Sheppard looked amused. "My thesis was on tumbleweeds."
The lab doors swooshed open, and Zelenka entered, pushing up his glasses with the hand that wasn't clutching his datapad. "Ah, Rodney, Dr Sheppard, I see you've met. Good."
"Zelenka," Rodney demanded, "why are there botanists in my lab?"
"Dr Sheppard was the one to discover the transporters, completely by accident," Zelenka said, like that was supposed to mean something. He clasped Sheppard's shoulder, and Sheppard smirked at Rodney again.
Rodney waited for more of an explanation. When it didn't come, he asked, "So? Is that supposed to impress me? What the hell are transporters?" Both Zelenka and Sheppard looked at him in surprise. "What? I'm not allowed to leave this floor, except to eat and occasionally sleep. Personally, I think Sumner feels threatened by me. You blow up one star, and suddenly everyone thinks you're a loose cannon."
Sheppard seemed a little concerned. "Uh, transporters are those things in the halls that we thought were closets. Turns out they're a quicker way to get from floor to floor."
"So I've been walking up and down five flights of stairs every day for nothing?" Rodney asked, scowling at Zelenka.
"You have been looking more fit lately," Zelenka said pleasantly.
"God, I hate you," Rodney said.
"I'm sure I will cry myself to sleep tonight. For now, Rodney, what I need you to do is take Dr Sheppard to the lower fifth level. There are a series of doors no one can get open. John is..." Zelenka made a vague gesture. "I do not know how to say it."
Rodney looked at Sheppard, who grinned. "Strongest gene in Atlantis," he boasted, doing jazz hands.
"Yes, I'm sure it impresses all the ladies." But even as he said it, Rodney remembered he'd seen Sheppard before, in the command chair in Antarctica. Oh, life was so unfair. Rodney had seen what his own personal hell was like, and its name was McMurdo. He pestered and lectured and casually informed everyone there that he was the foremost expert in Ancient technology (and not to mention the smartest man on Earth), but they stuck him doing catalogue work with an also-wasted Peter Grodin. It was impossible to enjoy poking and prodding Ancient gizmos when the chair was clear on the other side of the base.
"I should be the one working on the command chair," he told Grodin, "not that scatter-brained Ukranian."
"Zelenka's Czech, actually," Grodin said. He pulled the latex glove off his right hand and stabbed the elongated Ancient device with his bare pointer finger.
Rodney sighed, irritated. "Who cares what he is? I'm just saying that if I was in charge, we'd be in Atlantis by now. And stop poking that! You don't even know what it is!"
"Doesn't it look like a sperm to you?" Grodin asked.
"Well, it does now," Rodney said, squinting.
He was far, far away when Zelenka finally discovered the person who made the command chair work the way it was supposed to. Rodney always thought it was Carson -- he figured the man's bitching and moaning about not being able to work anything was just tragic self-esteem issues -- or some nameless, stupid military buffoon Sumner was holding as a secret weapon. But no, it was a fellow scientist, which stung.
"This will be the only time you ever hear this from me, but... why me? Wouldn't he be better off with some Marines, or at least someone less important?" Rodney asked suspiciously.
"Yeah," Sheppard agreed, "why him?"
Zelenka smiled smugly. "Because Rodney annoys me with his meddling, and Dr Sheppard annoys me with his jokes and his skateboard, so I think, it is best you annoy each other."
Rodney glowered at Sheppard. "Skateboard? Aren't you, like, thirty-five?"
"I asked if I could bring a ferris wheel, but they said it'd be too big to fit through the gate," Sheppard drawled.
*
"I don't have time for this," Rodney grumbled. He was right in the middle of figuring out how to stretch the single ZPM to power the entire city. He had to fix some of the consoles in the control room Grodin hadn't been able to get working. He had to send some people to check out if they could get the shields back up, because God knew Zelenka wasn't going to, and Kavanagh and Simpson wanted to take apart one of the gatejumpers. He was a busy, busy man, too busy to babysit some immature botanist who apparently hadn't gotten the memo he was in his thirties.
Sheppard frowned. "Yeah, I have work of my own, you know. We're trying to see if we can get one of the Ancient greenhouses working again--"
"Oh, greenhouses," Rodney said, "we're not wasting our ZPM on that."
"--So we won't starve to death," Sheppard finished, scowling.
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to expend some energy," Rodney said grumpily.
The doors no one -- supposedly -- could get open were keeping them from entering an entire block of the city. Rodney was extremely annoyed Zelenka had decided he, of all people, was best suited for this, especially since Sheppard's gene was apparently super enough to power the whole damn city, or something.
He was still clenching his teeth when Sheppard gave him a sneaky sideways glance. "Some of the soldiers have these things that look like tri-corders. They call them life signs detectors."
Rodney choked. "Life si--? What's the point of bringing along scientists if the military's keeping everything for themselves? Christ." He glared at Sheppard -- and even though logically he knew none of this was Sheppard's fault, he hated him anyway -- who just shrugged, looking completely at ease walking through the empty corridors. "What's with you, anyway? Shouldn't you be talking my ear off about potatoes, or beans, or whatever?"
"The first rule of botany is you don't talk about botany," Sheppard said easily.
They walked across a skywalk, which showed a vast expanse of blue sky and green ocean. It took Rodney a few moments to realize Sheppard had paused in front of the window. "I always wanted to be a pilot," Sheppard said.
"Yeah?" Rodney asked absently, not particularly interesting in hearing Sheppard's personal life story.
"Yeah," Sheppard replied. "But I got caught smoking weed too many times in high school. Luckily, that doesn't affect this job much."
"Er," Rodney said. "Should you be telling me this?"
"Why, you gonna tell Zelenka?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "Ha, yeah right. You know, I always wanted to be a pianist, but I was told I have no heart for it." Rodney glanced over his shoulder. Sheppard was still staring out the window with a strangely serious expression on his face. "How'd you go from tumbleweeds to xenobotany, anyway?"
"My old man's in the army," Sheppard said lightly. "I was working in the non-profit sector, but this seemed a lot cooler."
Rodney knew that for a botanist, "non-profit sector" meant "environmental terrorism." But Sheppard would never tell Rodney that before the military, he worked for the Rainforest Action Network, for whom he taught a "direct action training camp." His specialty was teaching anyone, no matter what shape or age, how to climb a tree and throw things at bulldozers. He was known in certain circles for his love of the earth, his ability to make government officials nervous just by smirking, and his quality weed. In the late 90's, his father the general surprised him by bailing him out after being arrested in a WTO protest.
"Listen, Johnny," General Sheppard said, "you're wasting your life doing this environmental shit. I know some people--"
"I'm not working for the enemy," John said, but his heart wasn't in it. They'd had this conversation almost as many times as they'd had the "why don't you just try dating girls?" one.
"You'll get to go to alien planets."
"I-- what?" Sheppard twisted in his seat to look at his father, who didn't take his eyes off the road. "Now you're just making things up."
General Sheppard gave John a sideways glance. "Son, I shouldn't be telling you this, because you don't have clearance, but I have it on good authority this project -- the one with the aliens -- is looking for outdoorsy people who have degrees in science. And these folks just happen to owe me a lot of favours. I know it's not as interesting as saving the rainforest, but..."
"Uh," Sheppard said. He bit his lip. He crossed his arms over his chest, then uncrossed them. "Can I have a few days to think it over?"
A flip of a coin later, he was working for the SGC. Another flip, he was in Atlantis.
In the city, Rodney was mentally calculating the best way to divide power so as to get the lights in the entire city working, because the second they stepped off the skywalk, the tower was dark and drafty. Rodney turned on his flashlight. A layer of dust had settled over everything in the room they were in, which looked somewhat like a lesser control room; in the middle of it was a pedestal, and by the door sat a console with a series of knobs and buttons.
"What's this do?" Sheppard asked, and immediately touched the console.
"Are you retarded?" Rodney snapped. "Don't touch anything!"
Sheppard looked annoyed. "I'm here to--"
The little light there was faded to nothing, and for an instant, everything went pitch-black. Rodney froze, heart pounding. Slowly, soft pinks and yellows started shining from a pedestal in the centre of the room. Rodney glanced at Sheppard's face; he also looked shocked and scared.
"Sheppard," Rodney said, "if we die, I'm going to spend the rest of eternity kicking your ass."
A hologram of a middle-aged man in robes appeared in from the top of the pedestal. Rodney felt himself relax slightly -- but then the hologram looked directly into his eyes, and he swallowed a wave of panic. The open doors behind them slammed shut, locking them in the room.
"Welcome to the Chamber of Secrets," the hologram said.
"You've got to be kidding me," Rodney said. "JK Rowling is no Ancient."
"Why do the Ancients speak English?" Sheppard asked after a moment.
"I asked somebody at the SGC once," Rodney said. "I never got a straight answer."
The hologram flickered a few times. Its Ancient form had no facial expression. "You have two minutes to answer three riddles. If they are answered correctly, all the doors in the tower will be unlocked."
"Cool," Sheppard said.
"If they are answered incorrectly, you will die."
"Suck," Sheppard said, biting his lip.
Rodney glared at Sheppard. "I don't even know you, but already I can tell, this could only happen to us."
"First riddle. You have two thermoses. The first contains a litre of milk, the second contains a litre of pure chocolate syrup. You pour one cup of milk out from the first thermos to the second one. Then, after mixing that, you take one cup of the mixture from the second thermos, and pour it back into the first thermos. After completing these two operations, which thermos is more pure?"
Rodney stared, slack jawed. "What? Chocolate milk? What?"
"Answer the riddle, McKay," Sheppard warned.
"I can't believe-- hey, do you think they have chocolate in Pegasus?" he asked hopefully. "Because my supply's running low already, and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without it -- not that I think we'll be here indefinitely, but it's a good idea to plan ahead. God, what I wouldn't do for a glass of chocolate milk right now."
Sheppard growled, "Hurry up, we only have ninety seconds and two more questions left!"
"Whatever," Rodney said with a wave of his hand. "Clearly both are equally pure. But now I want chocolate milk. Thanks a lot, Atlantis."
"We're going to die," Sheppard said gravely.
"Next riddle," the hologram cut in. It looked directly at Rodney again. Of course. "A traveller, on his way to a certain village, reaches a road junction, where he can turn left or right. He knows that only one of the two roads leads to the village, but unfortunately, he does not know which one. Fortunately, he sees two twin brothers standing at the road junction, and he decides to ask them for directions. The traveller knows that one of the two brothers always tells the truth and the other one always lies. Unfortunately, he does not know which one always tells the truth and which one always lies. How can the traveller find out the way to the village by asking just one question to one of the two brothers?"
"I'm learning way more about the Ancients than I never wanted to know," Rodney said. "You'd just ask both of them if they know where the road leads to. The truthful one would say he knows, and the liar would have to make something up."
The screen flickered. This time the hologram looked at Sheppard. "I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I?"
"Easy," Sheppard said smugly. "A nose."
"What the hell?" Rodney asked.
The hologram flickered once more and went out.
"We," Sheppard said as the doors slid open, "are totally awesome."
*
That was the start of their partnership. Zelenka was delighted they were able to get the doors opened, which led to new and exciting places: more apartments, communal living spaces with something Simpson swore were broken Ancient flat-screen televisions, scientific laboratories with half-finished projects Carson shrieked at everyone not to touch. Rodney, Sheppard, and a few others cleared out some of the labs so people could start moving in. The zoologists were starting to get on Zelenka's case about physicists and engineers having preference, so Zelenka wanted to give them a handful of the new rooms to work in. Then Rodney told them if they wanted to be treated like equals, they should've picked a better science, and, well, some people were overly sensitive.
There were other discoveries, too: Rodney found he and Sheppard worked surprisingly well together. They didn't seem to have a lot in common (not that he could really tell; Sheppard liked to talk about places he'd been or things he'd seen, but nothing about his personal life either before or on Atlantis, which was perfectly fine with Rodney, because if there was one thing Rodney hated (other than citrus, Lucky beer, and people who couldn't apply Kepler's Laws), it was talking about feelings), but Sheppard was easy to talk to, and unlike most of the people in the city, he seemed to actually listen to what Rodney had to say. Most of the time, at least. The rest of the time he was purposely trying to be as annoying as possible.
Best of all, Sheppard never tried to talk to him about plants (unless he was intentionally trying to piss Rodney off, in which case there was no telling what boring fact he'd share with Rodney that day). Early in their friendship, Rodney told him, "I did well in Biology, but I hated it. If I so much as hear the word 'photosynthesis,' I become filled with an uncontrollable rage."
"You and Dr Sheppard do good work together," Zelenka said to Rodney one day. "I will admit I was worried the combined powers of your abrasiveness would create a black hole and swallow us whole. You are getting along, yes?"
"Mind your own business," Rodney said.
With Sheppard's wonder gene and Rodney's superior intellect, they managed to check out a few more floors without incidence. Rodney hated running. He hated stalking through dark hallways, breathing in air that'd been recycled over and over for a thousand years. He hated the idea that today could be the day he fucked up and got both of them killed. But whenever they opened a door, whenever he had to figure out some new way to make things work better, faster, something in him grew until he wanted to burst. He knew Sheppard loved it too. It was the two of them against the world, and they were winning.
Then Sumner caught on to what was happening.
"Dr Zelenka," Sumner said, "what's this I hear about you sending civilians to explore the city without a guard? I made myself very clear when I said the military needs to make sure all areas are clear before you will be allowed to move your people in."
Zelenka faltered, but he didn't back down. "Colonel, Dr McKay is one of the few experts on Ancient technology."
Sumner's head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes at Rodney, and Rodney was really glad he was on the other side of the briefing room. "Dr McKay, huh? The SGC told me about you. Said you're a troublemaker. And you--" He frowned at Sheppard. "I don't even know who you are."
"Dr John Sheppard," Sheppard said, slouching low in his seat. "Botanist."
"We've discovered more in the past few weeks than you have in months," Rodney said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You didn't seem to be in any hurry to check out the rest of the city," Sheppard added.
"They do have a point, Colonel," Dr Weir said, arching her brows. "Perhaps it's a sign we should be less strict with the regulations. Dr Sheppard has shown a remarkable ability to manipulate Ancient technology."
"We're cut off from Earth," Sumner said tightly, "regulations are all we have left."
Rodney expected to be sent back to the labs -- he had a whole speech prepared on how two hundred fifty people living on just a handful of floors in a tiny fraction of the city would probably drive someone (namely him) to mass murder -- but Dr Weir and Sumner broke out into a fight that ended with Sumner grudgingly allowing Rodney and Sheppard to continue with their work as long as they took at least one soldier with them. Weir and Zelenka looked victorious, Sumner looked pissed, and Sheppard looked like he was thinking about what to have for lunch.
*
"They say you're the smartest man in Atlantis."
"They're right," Rodney replied automatically.
He glanced up from his laptop to see Sumner standing in the doorway. This was, to Rodney's knowledge, the first time Sumner had ever visited. Normally he didn't drift far from the command room and the second floor armoury; he usually sent Bates to do his dirty work when it involved the scientists, probably because they shared the same disdain for civilians. Sumner didn't have patience for people who didn't know how to kill a man five different ways using only his bare hands. Zelenka once said he didn't think Sumner had patience for anybody, not even those who served under him.
"Can you make a ZPM?" Sumner asked.
It took Rodney a second to realize the man was serious. "Yes, but I'd been trying to keep it a secret. Looks like you've figured me out. Now if you'll just get me a spoon and a rubberband, I'll have one for you in no time. No, of course I don't know how to build a ZPM. Christ."
"Then what use are you?" Sumner asked, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "We have over a hundred scientists here, and all of you are useless."
"Fuck you," Rodney said.
Sumner's nostrils flared. He took a few threatening steps forward. "I'm sick and tired of you civilians not realizing the situation we're in."
"You mean the situation where we're stuck in another galaxy, isolated from Earth?" Rodney asked. "Because that's been completely lost on me."
The lab was completely silent. Rodney wasn't going to let some macho thug come in here like he owned the city and insult Rodney's people. He wasn't the one who reported to Sumner; as far as he was concerned, Sumner was just another guy who happened to live in Atlantis. Zelenka appeared behind Sumner in the door, holding his datapad. He looked up, did a double take, and turned right back around and kept walking.
Sumner didn't notice. "You think this is some sort of joke? First Dr Beckett claims he can't find a way to make the gene therapy a hundred percent successful, and now Dr Sheppard--" Rodney choked, but he bit his tongue so hard it hurt. "--says he can't get the weapons to work using the command chair."
Sumner said it like he didn't believe it. Rodney didn't either; he'd been witness to what Sheppard's gene could do.
"If they say they can't do, they can't do it," Rodney lied.
Sumner took a little more time to gripe about how no one ever listened to him. Rodney ignored him and pretended to go back to work, but the entire time he was wondering why Sheppard wouldn't use the chair; if it were him, he'd've been working on it from the first week. But even with Carson's gene therapy, the chair didn't respond to him very well (he'd already tried more than once). Carson, he knew, made sure to not even take a step near the command chair room -- apparently Zelenka had harassed him to sit in it in McMurdo, and it'd scared the shit out of him -- but Rodney couldn't understand why anyone with the ability to manipulate Ancient technology wouldn't want to use it. Sky was blue, grass was green, force equalled mass times acceleration, the universe was meant to be taken apart and understood.
The second Sumner took a step outside the door, Rodney turned to Dumais, who'd been sitting there quietly the whole time. "Do you remember Sheppard?" he asked. She blinked at him. "Tall guy, dark hair, looks like a-- actually, I tend to think of surfers as blond, so I guess it's more accurate to say he's a skateboarder, although--"
"Yeah," she interrupted. "I remember him."
"Do you know where I can find him?"
"I think the botany lab is right below ours," she said. "Dr Zelenka wanted everyone close together."
"Thanks." He started heading towards the door, then stopped. "If Zelenka asks for me, I'm double-checking the transporter repairs on the east tower." The east side was the farthest from the lab; if Zelenka came looking for Rodney, he'd have a few extra minutes.
Her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. "Right."
He found Sheppard where she said he would, burying a thin plastic tube under dirt that stood in what Rodney guessed were long, glass planting pots. Parallel to where he was planting, several other rows were sprouting tiny buds. Rodney hoped none of these would set off his allergies.
"There's a greenhouse in here," Rodney said instead of, "Hello."
"Really?" Sheppard deadpanned, looking around like he'd just realized where he was.
"I thought you were kidding earlier when you said you guys were trying to get the greenhouses working."
"Why would I lie about something like that?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "I don't know! I thought it was botany humour."
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "We have funnier jokes than that. What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?"
"No idea," Rodney said flatly.
"Pumpkin pi."
"You're hilarious. You should really think about giving up the plants and going on tour." He watched Sheppard pat the dirt flat with his long, thin hands, and he said, "The craziest thing happened just now. Sumner asked me if I could build a ZPM. I told him that if I could, did he really think we'd still be here?"
"We might," Sheppard said, smiling.
"Well, okay," Rodney said, "but like I'd keep people here who wanted to go home. I'm not some mad scientist trying to trap everyone in another galaxy. He also said--" Rodney waved his hand vaguely, hoping to convey casualness. "--you won't work the command chair."
"I'm not a soldier," Sheppard said, narrowing his eyes. "I came here to do research. I'll do it if we get in trouble, but..." He shrugged, and Rodney put the pieces together: Sheppard was an environmentalist. He was a tree hugger, a rainforest saver; he sighed every time they passed a dead, withered tree in the hall. Rodney'd never seen him throw anything away. He wasn't going to practice shooting up aliens for the hell of it.
Sheppard stood, brushing off his hands. Dirt stained the knees of his loose khakis. "You wanna get something to eat? I think it's taco night."
"Yeah, okay," Rodney said.
And so life went on. Sumner ordered Lieutenant Ford to act as Rodney's and Sheppard's bodyguard, and he followed them through the darkened corridors, P-90 held high against their invisible enemies. Together they found a gymnasium, another series of apartments, and even a place that resembled a café. Sheppard sprained his ankle trying to skateboard down a stairwell. Miko single-handedly figured out how to turn all the lights in the city on while using barely any power, much to Ford's relief (and Rodney's). Zelenka remained obtuse.
"Did you know we have deep space scanners?" Zelenka asked.
Rodney slowly looked up from his laptop. "Yes."
The first time Sheppard came by the main lab when everyone was there, Rodney was in the middle of yet another screaming match with Gall. He was telling Gall how he was going to convince the Marines to dial a random location and just leave Gall there to die, when he heard Kavanagh ask:
"Aren't you one of the botanists?" Rodney turned in time to see Kavanagh wrinkle his nose at Sheppard (who had definitely not been there a minute ago) like he'd just seen something distasteful. "I don't think you're allowed to be in here. Why don't you go back to your plants and leave the real scientists to their work?"
Rodney snapped, "Kavanagh, shouldn't you be working on getting the archiving programme uplinked? Oh, that's right, you couldn't figure it out. Why don't you go get one of the jarheads to teach you basic math?"
"Rodney," Sheppard said, but he didn't sound angry. "I thought you might want to get something in your system besides caffeine. You've been here for, like, twelve hours. Ford said it's meatloaf today, and I know how you love processed breaded meat."
Rodney didn't eat in the mess often; he was too busy to take half an hour off, so he typically brought MREs back to the labs. Powerbars were a staple amongst the physics staff. When he did manage to sit down and enjoy himself, he preferred to eat alone or just with Sheppard, unless it was one of those days everything Sheppard said and did annoyed the hell out of him. "Why do potatoes make good detectives?" was one of Sheppard's jokes. "Because they keep their eyes peeled!" Sometimes in the lab he sat down with Zelenka, but the way Zelenka ate reminded him too much of Russia. Once, not long after they arrived in Atlantis, he made the mistake of sitting with other physicists. By the time the meal was done, he was forcibly trying not to kill them all with his cutlery. In the end, it was best just to stick with what he knew: himself, and occasionally Sheppard.
"Yeah, just--" Rodney looked back at Gall, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. "You're still here? Go away."
"I'm going to tell Dr Zelenka you're skipping work to hang out with your buddy," Kavanagh sneered, gaze flickering between Rodney and Sheppard.
"What are you, twelve? Whatever." Rodney waved a hand in dismissal. "As if Zelenka would care."
Both Gall and Kavanagh stomped off, each muttering something that was probably obscene under their breaths, and God, how Rodney longed to be in charge of these Neanderthals, just so he could punish them. He said to Sheppard, "What an idiot. He doesn't even know you." One corner of Sheppard's mouth curled up, and Rodney looked away, embarrassed. "And Gall's just... ugh. Don't get me started on that imbecile. Do you know he had the audacity to suggest he might be smarter than me?"
"What a bastard," Sheppard agreed easily.
On an intellectual level, Rodney knew every scientist in Atlantis was hand-picked by Zelenka, even Kavanagh. Even Sheppard. They were Earth's best and brightest. But the emotional part of Rodney was compiling a list of People I'm Trying to Give Cancer to With My Mind, and Kavanagh and Gall had been at the top of that list ever since McMurdo.
Rodney would almost feel bad about that when Gall would get killed during a botched diplomatic incident between Atlantis and the primitive people of Mauron (Rodney would always think it was ironic Gall died on a planet that sounded so close to "moron"). Sergeant Bates's team stumbled across his body less than a kilometre away from the gate.
"That's a shame," said one of Bates's teammates as they pulled Gall out of the bushes. Nobody liked Gall.
The official cause of his death was "allergic reaction to the mead he ingested at the welcoming ceremony," Dr Biro informed Rodney and Zelenka, snapping off her gloves.
"It's a wonder I'm still alive," Rodney said. He was forty-nine.
Kavanagh's last words to Rodney would be, "I told you that was lethal."
One time after a long day of fixing other people's mistakes, Rodney came into the lab to pick up his laptop, and he found a note taped to it. It was written on formal stationary.
Dr McKay,
In your latest report regarding damaged dampeners on Gatejumper 4, you had several spelling and punctuation errors. Please see that you use spellcheck in your future reports. We do not want the entirety of the physics team to be embarrassed when the SGC rescues us. Also, please stop stealing my pens. I paid for them myself.
Sincerely,
Dr Kavanagh
In Rodney's next report, he made sure to misspell as many words as possible while still being coherent. Then he stole half of Kavanagh's pens and passed them out to the senior staff. Zelenka looked at him funny for a few days after that, but all Rodney would do was smirk at him. Kavanagh never said anything; if anything, Kavanagh just grew colder towards him, which suited him just fine. He didn't need friends -- he had Atlantis.
Kavanagh would remain on Atlantis for the rest of his days, eventually giving up on being "rescued" by the SGC. He and Rodney tried to avoid working together as much as humanly possible; the longest conversation they ever had after the third year was saying hello when they passed each other in the hallways.
A few years after they arrived on Atlantis, Kavanagh, Simpson, and Brown were caught trying to repair the bubbling tanks on the walls. They started with one tower everyone considered too far to bother with; Brown had the great idea of turning the tubes into fish tanks, and she smuggled in fish and plants while Simpson worked on the mechanics. No one remembered how Kavanagh got involved, but he was the one who brought in the purple frog-like creature from Atlantica -- which turned out to be highly toxic, and was probably the way rebellious Ancient teenagers used to get high. He was found wandering the halls tripped out his mind, mumbling about, "I understand everything now; the universe is inside me." Simpson said that it was totally worth it, even after Zelenka, Biro, and Weir all yelled at them for sneaking in strange wildlife without clearing it first. Sheppard said the tanks were just a front for the frog-licking, and then he whined for two weeks that he would've been invited if Rodney hadn't ruined his reputation.
When Kavanagh announced Sheppard's presence in the lab, Rodney didn't notice he wasn't the only one observing Sheppard. It took him a few minutes to realize a few -- okay, pretty much all -- of the women were looking at Sheppard like he was made of every food they ever missed from Earth. Even Dumais was staring, still leaning over her bench, a screwdriver in one hand. He'd never seen that expression on her face before. Simpson and Miko were whispering behind their hands in the corner.
Rodney bristled and put a hand on Sheppard's back, steering him towards the door. "Come on, let's go before they start fighting over who gets to bear your love child."
Sheppard craned his neck. "What? Who? What?"
"I knew I should've taken botany," he heard Simpson say. Miko "mm-hmm"-ed enthusiastically.
"The asshole with the ponytail was playing Bejeweled on his laptop," Sheppard said.
"Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints," Rodney murmured.
*
Their fifth month in Pegasus, Sumner and Weir began making deals with other civilizations. Privately, Zelenka told Rodney it was something Weir'd wanted to do from the start, once they'd realized they couldn't go back to Earth, but Sumner had refused to send his troops on "suicide missions" to trade with "heathens," even though the six or seven planets they'd been to had various levels of sophistication.
"What an enlightened man," Rodney said sarcastically. "Next you'll be telling me he thinks a woman's place should be in the kitchen."
It wasn't so much they were running out of supplies as it was people were starting to worry about running out of supplies. Carson was telling anyone who'd listen he was almost out of this and that antibiotic, and something about clean syringes, and if Sumner wanted him to find a way to make everyone on Atlantis able to carry the gene, they best start seeing which planets carried what he needed. More importantly, people started to talk about how maybe, just maybe, some other worlds just might have ZPMs. Ones they'd be willing to part with.
Zelenka said this time, Weir told Sumner she'd go alone if he didn't give her a squadron of Marines. "She's a very brave woman," he said, with stars in his eyes. Rodney tried to point out Weir usually caved to whatever Sumner wanted, but Zelenka acted as if the comment personally offended him.
Sheppard hopped up on Rodney's lab bench, looking pleased with himself, which was never a good thing. He sat on top of several print-outs Rodney was reading. "Guess what."
"Judging by your good mood, I'd guess someone found a surplus supply of hair gel."
"They're going to start sending scientists with the offworld teams," Sheppard answered, ignoring Rodney's comment. He was practically humming with excitement. "Lieutenant Ford asked me to be on his."
It took a minute for that to sink in. Rodney demanded, "Are you nuts? Haven't you ever seen an episode of Star Trek? Scientists always die on away missions."
"So I won't wear my red shirt," Sheppard drawled. "Seriously, McKay, it'll be cool. It's some peaceful farming planet."
"They're always peaceful farming planets!" Rodney exclaimed, waving his arms. "Do you even know how to shoot a gun?"
Sheppard gave him a look. "My dad was in the army."
"What does that mean? Yes? No?"
"It means..." Sheppard picked at a string on the hem of his blue t-shirt. "I can shoot cans with a rifle."
Rodney threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, okay, Rambo, that changes everything."
Sheppard glared. "Can't you be happy for me? I get to go exploring alien worlds. Imagine all the species of plants that are probably completely different from anything on Earth. We might be able to find something that can feed us for months."
"They could bring samples back for you," Rodney said. "Parrish or what's-her-face, the redhead-- don't look at me like that, I barely know the names of people I work with. One of them could go instead. Why you?"
"Parrish gets lost going from the greenhouse to the bathroom, and Katie-- you'd seriously prefer they sent Katie Brown to a possibly hostile alien world over me?"
"Ha," Rodney said smugly, "you just admitted it was hostile."
"Ford said it was perfectly safe," Sheppard said, stepping off the bench and back onto the floor.
What Ford actually said was, "Hey, man, how do you feel about kicking some alien ass?" and, "Sumner told me to take a scientist, and I thought you'd might like to go. But just to warn you, it'll probably be dangerous." Sheppard was all cool and collected when he told Rodney about it, but he was pretty much scared out of his mind. The most danger he'd ever been in were protests that turned violent (and that one time in Greenpeace when he'd chased a whaling boat for six hours off the coast of China) and even then, injuries were something to use against The Man, to demonstrate the barbaric behaviour of the cops or coast guard or whoever was keeping them down this week. The closest he'd ever come to war was listening to his father's stories, and they weren't even very good. When Sheppard was a kid, he thought his dad was so brave, but then he grew up and realized his dad was sort of an asshole. An asshole who didn't recycle.
Of course, Rodney didn't know any of this. He just thought Sheppard must've been missing the part of his brain that handled self-preservation.
For the next two days, Sheppard didn't show up to bug him. At first Rodney thought maybe Sheppard was actually doing work for once; but after day two rolled around and there was still no sign of the man, he told himself he was just glad Sheppard wasn't there to annoy him, because Sheppard would've just distracted Rodney from fixing the yet-again broken sewage system. But still, he looked over his shoulder every time someone walked past the lab.
There was only so much self-denial he could stand. Around six in the evening, he snapped his laptop closed and said to Zelenka, "I'm going on a break."
Zelenka's hair was sticking up straight, and with his wide eyes, he looked kind of insane. His jaw dropped, and he asked suspiciously, "Break? You never take break."
"I need a cigarette like you wouldn't believe," Rodney called over his shoulder.
"You don't smoke!" Zelenka shouted after him.
That whole conversation would later come back to haunt Rodney, as someone from the labs began spreading rumours he was running an underground black market. In one instance, Vogel would try to con Rodney into trading his bed sheets for cigarettes (Rodney really, really didn't want to know). Miko would want extra toothpaste for Hershey's kisses. Ford would try to trade him coffee for spare condoms, and on four separate occasions, chocolate syrup.
"There are no words to describe how TMI that is," Rodney would say.
Rodney bumped into Sheppard coming off the transporter. He was wearing the black jacket and BDUs of the soldiers. "Hey," Sheppard said, surprised.
"Hey," Rodney replied.
"Were you looking for me?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney said, "Oh, were you gone?"
Sheppard grinned like Rodney had made a joke. But he just said, "Ford's had me doing target practice all day. I think I've got the hang of it."
"You're going to fucking die," Rodney said.
"We might find coffee beans," Sheppard said, rolling his eyes. "Then you'll tell me this was the best idea Ford ever had."
Rodney thought he'd probably prefer having Sheppard alive over having an endless supply of alien coffee (even though he'd probably be able to jerk off to the image of a freshly-brewed pot of Columbian by this point), but he wasn't stupid enough to tell Sheppard that. Especially when Sheppard was wearing all black and looking a little sweaty.
On the morning of Sheppard's first mission, Rodney woke up early and headed to Ford's rooms. The day before, he'd bribed Lieutenant Crown, whom he'd seen flirting with Ford, to tell him where Ford lived. It cost him a bag of Twizzlers. Ford was in a section of the city Sheppard and Rodney had cleared out themselves, before Sumner'd found out about their exploits; as he walked down the corridor, Rodney remembered these same light panels on the walls coming to life as Sheppard crossed their paths. He remembered Sheppard gazing out the huge window in the centre of the hall, telling Rodney, "I don't think we'll ever be able to learn everything about Atlantis, do you?"
Ford opened his door in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. "McKay? What're you doing here?"
"I need to give you some important information about your mission today," he said.
"Yeah?" Ford asked apprehensively.
"Dr Sheppard's always cold, so you should take an extra sweater," Rodney said. He ticked the list off on his fingers. "Uh, he gets lost really easily, so don't let him wander away. I don't need to remind you he doesn't have any combat training, so I'll assume you won't let him get shot in the face. He doesn't follow orders, so you might have to threaten him. He--"
Ford was staring at him like he was in the process of trying to explain quantum mechanics. It was a nervous, flighty look, but he didn't know if Ford was thinking taking Sheppard along was a mistake, or if Rodney himself made Ford anxious, or what. "McKay, chill, it's okay. I know what I'm doing. Johnny--" And oh, how that nickname cracked Rodney up every time. "--will be fine. I'll bring him back to you in one piece."
"See to it that you do," Rodney sniffed.
"I have an hour before I have to get up," Ford said, stepping back.
"Don't forget--" The door slid shut. "--The sweater!"
When he went back to his rooms to get his laptop, he found Sheppard there, knocking on the door. He was already dressed in black BDUs, looking calm and cool. "Almost time for me to head out," he said casually.
"Is it?" Rodney asked.
"I'll be okay," Sheppard said. "It's no big deal. Ford's been off-world a bunch of times already, and nothing really bad's happened."
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "You realize you're jinxing yourself, right?"
Sheppard stepped forward until they could almost brush arms, and Rodney swallowed thickly. "I wanted to tell you..." Sheppard licked his lips. "What vegetable can tie your stomach in knots?"
"Oh my God," Rodney said.
"String beans." With that, Sheppard spun on one heel and walked away, throwing Rodney a grin over his shoulder.
"I hope you get stabbed by a native," Rodney shouted at his back.
Rodney stayed in the labs the rest of the day, but he managed to time being in the gateroom when he knew Ford's team was supposed to return, claiming he was helping Grodin configure the scanners.
"I don't think they're broken, McKay," Grodin said.
"Of course that's what you'd think, wouldn't you," Rodney said, pretending to be looking at something. Thankfully, he typed faster than Grodin could read.
When Sheppard walked through the gate, Rodney let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Sheppard had a smudge on one cheek and a stupid grin on his face. In his arms was a basket of something that looked like corn. Ford slapped him on the back, saying something Rodney couldn't hear from the balcony, and they laughed together. Something uncurled in Rodney's chest.
Sheppard looked up, met Rodney's eyes, and waved. "I shot somebody," he shouted, sounding excited. "It was pretty awesome!"
"You're insane," Rodney yelled back, leaning over the rail. The soldier beside him recoiled a little.
On Sheppard's third mission, he went from being the shooter to the shootee. Ford, Parker, Stankovich, and Sheppard were negotiating with the farmers of P1X-436 for their grain when the local lord whipped out a gun and fired. Rodney was in the lab telling Gall exactly why he was the stupidest man in the Pegasus Galaxy when his radio sparked to life.
"McKay," Ford's voice said, "you might want to head over to the infirmary."
Rodney went cold all over. "I told you not to let him get shot in the face!"
Gall stood between Rodney and the door. He sneered, "Isn't it convenient you have an excuse to leave just as I was winning the argument."
"Get the fuck out of my way," Rodney snapped.
When he got to the infirmary in record time, only a little out of breath, he found Sheppard lying on one of the beds, Carson "tsk"-ing him. Sheppard's BDU pants were dripping with blood.
"I got shot, Rodney," Sheppard told him. "In the leg."
"Good for you," Rodney said.
Carson started to cut off John's pants with a pair of tiny scissors. "Okay, Dr Sheppard, I'm just going to give you a local anaesthetic, and we're going to get that nasty bullet out."
Sheppard patted Rodney's hand. He was either drunk or he'd lost a lot of blood. "Guns are bad. I feel bad now for shooting that guy on P2X-381. It hurts like a bitch."
"Should you be doing that out here in the open?" Rodney asked Carson. "He's going to get an infection and his leg's going to fall off. We can't have a one-legged botanist. That's just a whole new level of weird I don't think anyone's prepared to deal with."
Carson let out an exasperated breath. "And where do you purpose I do it then? It's not like we've found an Ancient operating room. I've been making due with what's available." He said this with surprising vehemence. His face a little more lined than it'd been when they walked through the gate a few months ago.
"Rodney and I will find you a real infirmary," Sheppard said to Carson.
"You just worry about getting better," Carson soothed.
It was so like Carson to fall for Sheppard's charms like that. If Rodney had promised to find him a lab, Carson would've "accidentally" stabbed him with those scissors. Rodney glared at Sheppard, taking in his pale face, his open, bleeding wound, and Rodney suddenly felt light-headed.
"I should go," he said, jerking a thumb to the door behind him. "Important things to do, idiots all around me, and so forth and so on."
Carson didn't even look up from the syringe he was filling. "That's probably a good idea. Wouldn't want you to get sick on us."
Rodney spent the rest of the day (silently) fretting over Sheppard being one step away from death, even after he radioed Carson and had to listen to Carson say, "No, Rodney, his leg is still here. Yes, Rodney, the bullet's removed, and he's recovering nicely. No, Rodney, I will not stop being a smart ass. Go back to work, you bloody woman." It was only natural for him to be concerned about his friend. He took out his stress the best way he knew how: by terrorizing everyone around him. It worked up until the point when he found out exactly what happened on the mission.
"The Lieutenant said Dr Sheppard was accused of flirting with the leader's daughter," Zelenka said, rolling his eyes. "Then Lieutenant Ford tried to explain Sheppard is like that with everyone, and it seems the people of P1X-436 find such behaviour, um--"
"Slutty?" Rodney asked.
"I was going to say 'distasteful,' but that works," Zelenka replied. "But that is why they shot him. Apparently, that is the standard punishment on their world. I find it interesting these people do not have indoor plumbing, yet they possess the ability to blow off people's legs."
Rodney said, "Sheppard, that stupid fuck. I hope he gets space syphilis and his dick rots."
Zelenka raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn't say anything. Rodney turned back to his laptop, fuming.
[ Part Two]