New Fic: The City in the Sea; chapters one through five
Title: The City in the Sea
Author: Kodiak bear
Pairing: None
Rating: M, for language
Warning: Character death; permanent
Summary: When Rodney is killed, Sheppard has to find a way to live.
AN: After I wrote Walk the Line, Shelly begged me to write a different kind of deathfic. One where John has to live after losing McKay, and where there are no miracles. So, Shelly - here you go. You’ve made me grow and learn, and may you always keep challenging me!
The City in the Sea
By Kodiak bear
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
- Edgar Allan Poe
One
“John, you’re not being fair.”
I ground my heels to a dead stop in the hallway, and spun around, angry. She’d followed me from the briefing and confronted me in a public place instead of the semi-private room I’d just left moments before. “What part of ‘he’s a dick’ is being unfair?” I replied, caustically. Clearly, I knew what part.
Elizabeth didn’t even flinch. She stared evenly at the few people openly watching, until they retreated into their own business again, before turning her attention back to me. “Let me see,” she mocked. “The part where you called him a ‘dick’ or maybe the ‘incompetent buffoon’ and ‘self-serving ass’…did I miss one, because I’ve got the report right here.” She held up the manila folder.
“Elizabeth,” I stated, more calmly then I felt. “You asked me to make an assessment, and I did.”
“An assessment, John - not a character assassination,” she stressed.
I was tired, and I could see she was, too. This little face to face wasn’t going to get us anywhere, but I had to ask. “What do you want from me? You want me to lie - pretend he’s Mr. Incredible?”
The frown marred her face, and then it melted. The folder dropped to her side, held loosely in her fingers. “John, stop expecting them to be McKay.”
As the words hit, I closed my eyes. God, I was so fucking tired. McKay - she’d said his name. Not many people dared to do that to my face. When I opened them again, she was still there, and the sympathy made me want to hit something. I leaned in, close, and whispered, “I don’t expect them to be Rodney; that’s the problem.” I didn’t give her time to reply, instead, turned quickly back the way I’d been going initially.
“You need to talk, John,” she called after me.
I kept walking.
OoO
“I tried out a new scientist today.”
My quarters were dark; quiet. I liked it that way lately. Peace. I needed peace, but I knew why I was short with everyone, even Ronon and Teyla. I couldn’t find peace. Not in the dark, in my sleep, in my room or through the gate. “The guy sucked,” I continued, conversationally. “He thought he was God’s gift to every science branch known to man.” I laughed at the memory of the preening kid. Fresh out of college and full of memorized facts and useless information. And fuck him for reminding me of another certain arrogant scientist who’d thought the same thing.
Invulnerable.
Slamming the basketball against the wall, I swore, “Invulnerable, my ass.”
I threw it again, harder than I should’ve, and the ball bounced high, over my head, and I was too tired to roll off the bed and retrieve it. Didn’t matter anyway. The clock showed it was past time for me to sleep, but like everything else lately, sleep was hard.
Dreams…dreams were nightmares, and I couldn’t get away from them. Nothing like closing your eyes and being transported back to that instant when your best friend had his life sucked out of him. And then reliving it over and over and over again, as if the first time hadn’t been enough.
When Lorne arrived with Ronon, they’d busted in the room, and found Rodney’s lifeless corpse beside me. If they’d taken just one more day to find us, I wouldn’t be stuck living this pain every single day. One day longer. Then again, if they’d been a day earlier, I wouldn’t be living this pain, either. Better to think the former, because the latter only made me murderous.
I don’t remember much about the trip back to Atlantis. The week after. I guess I went a little crazy there for a while, and Carson sedated me. I often found myself wondering if maybe I’d had the right idea after all. Go nuts, get drugged, and not have to deal with any of this.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t lost friends before; I had. But not like this, and not…like this.
“You know the worst part about today?” I rolled and went after the ball. Sleep wasn’t gonna happen. “The kid had the guts to tell me that I had a complex about you. That no one could ever live up to the ‘great McKay’ and maybe it was past time for me to start accepting the status quo.” I laughed unpleasantly. “Twenty-two fucking years old, if a day, and he’s telling me how to handle my life.”
The ball pounded against metal with a satisfying smack. Maybe I should head to the gym - but as quickly as I considered that idea, I tossed it. Too many people. Too many Ronon’s and Teyla’s, more to the point. I locked my doors, and kept them out, but I couldn’t always hide behind locked doors. They were driving me nuts. Hell - everyone was.
‘Are you okay, Colonel’ or ‘if you need to talk, Sheppard’ better yet, the most annoying one, ‘get some sleep, John’.
“Did you catch the eulogy I gave you?” It’d been damn moving. Even impressed myself. “I made Kirk proud - something about ‘you were the most human human’, figured if anyone earned it, you did.” He’d saved my life, after all. I supposed a damn good eulogy was the least I could do.
Screw it. I threw the ball again, this time intentionally savage, and it rebounded far overhead. I pushed myself off my cot, and ignoring my boots, padded into the hall, peeking for the very people I hoped to avoid. I needed the sea tonight.
Two
The balcony was cold; salt spray didn’t reach this high up, but the air was chilled from below, and the tang was on my tongue. I knew if I stuck it out, I’d taste eternity. At first, I stood at the railing, looking out at the whitecaps. There was a gusty breeze blowing over the waters and buffeting the city. After my legs began to ache from standing, I wandered to the edge of the wall that met with the railing, and slid down, sitting with my legs splayed loosely in front of me.
It wasn’t as dark as it should’ve been. The lights of Atlantis let off a glow that bled into the water below, a painter’s palette where the black mixed with yellow. The defining line between was vague and soft.
I let my head fall back against the wall, and closed my eyes. A gust of wind blew across my face, and I smiled. “I shouldn’t be talking to you; people will think I’m nuts.”
Truthfully, I couldn’t remember exactly when I’d started, but I think it was after Beckett stopped the sedation. Maybe before...there was a part of me that knew I was turning into a wreck, just as they’d feared I would. But there was another part of me fighting it; clawing and shouting. I didn’t want to be in this black place, this painful place.
It wasn’t just that I missed McKay. He’d been my friend; that was expected. It was the way he’d died. It would always be the way he died.
“I’m going to stay out here until the sun rises,” I murmured. Maybe it would light the empty pit growing inside of me. God, something needed to. I wanted to feel the warmth; see the light.
At some point, I must have dozed, but when I woke, the sun had already risen, and I was curled on my side trying to stay warm. I felt lousy, and the sunshine must have passed over me, because I couldn’t feel it.
“John?”
I uncurled my body, and rolled into a sitting position, stretching protesting limbs. Knowing I probably looked as bad as I felt, I sighed. This wasn’t going to be pretty. “I’m not late yet,” I said. Judging from the position of the sun in the sky, it was still early, and the briefing wasn’t scheduled till ten.
Her look was painful. She moved to my side, and slid down, the electronic notepad in her hands blinking ‘send’ on an email she’d drafted but I couldn’t tell who the intended recipient was. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Elizabeth asked. “Teyla and Ronon are worried. I’m worried.”
The truth was there, on the tip of my tongue, and I almost took her open invitation… “It’s only been two weeks,” I deflected instead. “I’m just…having problems sleeping.”
Two weeks. The first week had been in Beckett’s care, the second week I’d spent on missions pushing myself to choose a replacement, despite everyone protesting. It was too soon, they’d said. Ronon had accused me with his silent stares, while Teyla had just seemed to collapse within herself.
“Problems?” she echoed. Elizabeth shook her head. “John, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
Wasn’t that normal? Wasn’t grief supposed to throw off sleeping, eating - living patterns? Wasn’t it wrong to expect life to carry on as normal when someone disappeared violently from your daily routine? I’d done that after Dex and Mitch died because I had to. I wish I knew how to do that again. I was doing my job, getting through the day, but there was a maniacal edge to me, and I knew it. And I knew it was also because of the secret I was holding.
I opened my mouth to spew any hundred of false assurances. If I couldn’t tell the truth, maybe at least I could lie. But the roiling hot edge of grief surged, and I turned to the water. When a few moments passed, I knew I had control again, but I kept staring out; away. “It’s only up from where I’m standing,” I admitted. I wasn’t denying I’d hit rock bottom. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“I’ve sent Carson an email.”
Her tone of voice made me frown at the water. I turned, and studied her before asking, “And?”
“I told him you’re on your way to see him.”
“I’m not.”
She climbed to her feet, and her sadness was palpable. “Yes, you are.”
I held her look, pleading without words for her not to do this, but she remained steady. I grimaced, “I just needed time.” But I stood as well, surprised at how deep the pain in my legs went. Guess lying in the cold night without even a blanket had been stupid. I aborted a bitter chuckle. Stupid. He would’ve been the one to tell me that. The thickening in my throat was bad, and I needed to get away. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I got one last dig back. There was a reason I hadn’t been to see Beckett since he’d released me. I always had my reasons. Before she had a chance to reply, to tell me how this was for my own good, I strode around her, and left the balcony.
OoO
When I entered the infirmary, he was waiting. The week away hadn’t changed anything. Hadn’t erased the haunted look on Beckett’s face. I debated on turning around and leaving. If Elizabeth wanted to foist this on me, make her do the dirty work.
“Lad -” Carson breathed.
“I’m here because I was ordered to, not because I have any problems I need you to treat.” I laid it out, right from the get-go. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to look at Beckett and see his haggard face. Every time I looked at him, I saw the unspoken begging for why. There was no why - it’d happened to more people before McKay; the more appropriate question was ‘why not’.
“One look at you, and I know you’ve got problems.” The harsh accusation was out of character for the usually soft-spoken doctor.
I knew my forehead was crumpling; two weeks. It’d been only two weeks. “Help…” I stuttered it out even as my brain tried to tell my mouth no. But, God, I wanted help… “Take it away,” I whispered.
Beckett’s nostrils flared, and his face was on the verge of crumpling along with mine. "Nobody can take it away,” he croaked.
He thought I was talking about the pain; the grief. I was talking about the memory. I didn’t want to close my eyes and see McKay’s life being drained anymore. To watch that rugged stubborn face twisted in horror, and begin to age years in seconds. An anger so primal rose up, and twisted inside me. I could feel my breaths coming in harsh, rapid pulls. I curled my hand into a fist, and spun, punching the wall. “That’s not what I meant!” I raged - because I couldn’t tell him what I meant. I couldn’t…I kicked at a tray of instruments, the defibrillator.
“Colonel!” Carson swore and then shouted, “I need some help in here - bring me .04 Lorazepam.”
The order stilled my body. I looked at my hand in numb surprise. It was bleeding; the knuckles split open, and I didn’t feel a thing. The defibrillator lay in a broken pile on the floor, the table it’d been resting on now canted over the top right edge. I swallowed down the bile over what I’d done. “I don’t need it,” I protested. The rage had evaporated as quickly as it’d come.
A nurse handed the hypodermic to Beckett, staring sadly at the mess. I felt the rage whisper again. Those fucking sad looks - every where I turned. Why couldn’t they stop? I was a big boy, had seen death, lived with death - why the hell was this one any different? Why was this one causing me to come undone…but the reason was one I didn’t like to face. It was also not something I’d share. With anyone.
Beckett approached me warily. “I’m sorry, son, but I’m going to have to insist.”
“Don’t,” I asked, my voice cracking. I couldn’t strike out at him; not him. He was McKay’s friend, as much as he’d been mine. Having to see the devastation I felt mirrored in Beckett’s entire being…I just wanted to leave; escape.
“We can do this two ways; willingly, and you get to lay down first, or I tackle you, and call for help to haul you into a bed…that way involves restraints, by the way.”
I searched his face for any sign of weakness; any sign that I could sway him from this course of action, but all I saw was the same pain, tempered by his lack of memory of the actual death. Damn it, damn it, damn it! Closing my eyes to shut out the sight, I murmured, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Beckett heard, and thought I meant him. “Bloody hell, Colonel - d’ye think I enjoy seeing you come undone? None of us does,” he protested, angry.
I almost replied that I wasn’t talking to him, and then realized that’d probably just mean I’d get to be his guest for even longer, and I didn’t want that. It was time for damage control. I re-opened my eyes, surprised at how bright the infirmary was. “Where do you want me?” I asked, and a small part of me was eager for the shot. Eager to lose myself for a while in the drugged no-man’s land, where Rodney’s face wouldn’t beg me to end it.
I forced my feet to go where Beckett pointed. The bed was in a corner, and after I got into the scrubs he’d handed over, not even letting me change alone, I climbed in. He took my arm in a firm grip, and swabbed it with alcohol. After he gave the injection, he breathed deep. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said. “Sorry that we haven’t been able to help you like we should’ve.” The drug was fast acting, and the lethargy tugged at me, promising rest, finally. “But we will now…no more running; for any of us.” As I drifted into the sweet embrace of darkness, I cringed at Carson’s promise. I wanted to run.
Chapter Three
“Start at the point when you woke up in the cell, Colonel.”
Kate was perched in her chair, pulled away from the desk so that she could sit exactly opposite of me, with no barriers. I wanted barriers. She thought it helped; I thought it was claustrophobic. I’d woken from the sedative, wanting to go to my room and sleep it the rest of the way off, only to find that I was removed from duty. Beckett had apologized, his words hollow, saying he never should’ve put me back on before. It’d been too soon and he blamed my current condition on his own bad judgment. I’d almost confessed, then, just to rid the man of his self-recriminations.
“It’s in the report,” I said, dully.
She crossed her legs, and tilted her head, lips pursed in sympathy. “Actually, it’s not.”
Confusion reigned for a brief moment before I sighed. “I haven’t written it yet.” Stupid. Every mistake I made kept nailing my coffin tighter. “I forgot.”
“That’s understandable.”
The bitter chuckle was short. “No,” I said. “It’s not. I meant to do it days ago.”
She adjusted my file on her lap, and leaned forward. “Colonel, do you realize that you are the only one expecting yourself to jump back in the saddle, so to speak? You’re the one trying to pretend you weren’t captured, interrogated, had your friend and co-worker murdered in front of you because you wouldn’t talk.”
“I couldn’t,” I replied, voice hoarse.
The smile was understanding, comforting…clinical. “Of course not.”
I sat in the chair, not knowing what to say. She didn’t understand, couldn’t. After a few moments of silence stretching tautly between us, she leaned back. “I think we’ve done enough for today, Colonel.” Her eyebrow arched as she eyed me. “Are you taking your medicine?”
Beckett had discharged me, but only on the condition that I willingly took my happy pills. I agreed, but every day I was flushing them. They made me sick, tense, cotton-headed. “Sure,” I said, but inwardly flinched because she’d read my hesitation for the lie that it was.
“John,” she sighed. “It’s for your own good.”
“I’m a big boy, Doc. I can decide what’s good for me on my own.”
I was afraid she’d call Carson. Tell him I wasn’t following orders, and turn me over to him, but she shook her head. “No, you can’t. Not right now - but I’ll let you keep your little secret, unless you fail to make progress in our sessions, am I understood, Colonel?”
“Like crystal,” I replied.
Leaving her office, I headed to a place I shouldn’t. People stared. Part of that was my fault. I was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, figured what the hell, right? If I was off duty, might as well make the most of it. But instead, all I did was keep reminding everyone I ran into that McKay had died, and I was damaged. The only thing they didn’t know was just how much.
When I walked into Rodney’s lab, it was quiet. I’d been here before, right after Beckett had released me after the rescue. No one had touched his things yet, and I drifted over to his desk. The coffee cup was still there. I smiled ruefully remembering that last cup. We were getting ready for our mission, or rather, I’d been getting ready. McKay had gotten tied up working on a compression program. He was still trying to figure out a way to preserve more of the database in case we had to blow the city and beat a hasty retreat.
I found him typing furiously over his keyboard, the mostly full cup sitting forgotten by his side on the desk. I’d pulled up a chair, drank his coffee and waited. By the time he finished, he reached for the cup, found it empty, looked over at me and scowled. “You drank my coffee.”
The smile I had was soft, and slow, and full of feigned innocence. “No, I didn’t. You must’ve drank it while in your work-induced coma.”
“I’d remember drinking my coffee.”
I snorted, and folded my arms, leaning back in the chair and swiveling. “You can’t even remember to be in the gateroom on time.”
A look of dawning realization twisted into annoyance. “So you drank my coffee to get back at me?”
Smirking, I stood. “No, I drank your coffee because I was thirsty.” I shut the cover on his laptop. “Let’s go before Elizabeth sends a search party after us.”
Lifting the cup now, looking at the mocha crescent moon in the bottom…I ached. If he’d been on time, or if I’d stayed, and got him another cup of fucking coffee and discussed his algorithm…if if if, it’d always be ‘if’. Two letter word that held more power than all the letters in the alphabet combined.
“I couldn’t do it, you know,” I said to the desk. To the chair where he’d be sitting if… “I’m not sure I can wrap my mind around what that says about me -”
Obviously, he had known I couldn’t do it. His eyes had found mine, bluer than I’d ever seen them before, and damn if he hadn’t understood. But I didn’t…son of a bitch, I didn’t! I threw the coffee cup across the room, listening as the ceramic shattered into a hundred pieces, just like me.
I’d done it for Sumner, a guy I could barely stand, but I hadn’t been able to do it for Rodney, a guy that I considered to be my best friend. What kind of fucked up statement did that say about me? When it mattered, I couldn’t find the courage. That’s what I wouldn’t tell them. It was the secret I couldn’t tell.
I’d told the truth to a point. We’d been captured off-world, that much everyone knew, because Ronon and Teyla had been with us. The Wraith queen had interrogated us together, but something allowed us to resist the mind probes. Rodney thought it was the ATA gene, and when we escaped, he’d wanted to have Carson look into it. When the queen had come back a third time, she’d pulled Rodney into the middle, and latched on. She only tasted at first, and I’d wondered why, when a Wraith warrior walked in and handed me my gun. McKay had been shaking, but he hadn’t pleaded for his life. Somehow, staring at me, he’d found the guts he needed. Horrified, but not begging. I only wish I could’ve said the same.
“Tell me the location of Earth, or your friend dies,” she’d sneered.
When I’d asked why they’d given me the pistol, she’d taken a little bit more of McKay and whispered seductively, “Because you fail to have the courage to do what you must - if you shoot me, your friend dies. If you do nothing, your friend dies. If you tell me where Earth is, he’ll live. If you shoot him, I will lose my leverage over you, and the location of Earth, but you do not have the strength of mind to do what you should.”
She had played me like a guitar, though I still didn’t know what she’d hoped to accomplish with her mind games. Three warriors had kept stunners pointed on me; I couldn’t take her out, because she was right. She’d drain Rodney and regenerate her damaged parts. If she kept up draining Rodney, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t beg for her to stop. To give her something that would make her stop…time; we needed more time for the rescue to come. There was always a rescue. We’d done it before; Rodney had done it for me before. They wouldn’t let us down, I knew it, so we only needed to hold on. If I shot McKay, and they beamed us out, then there’d be no rescue…I couldn’t do it. Even as she drained him, year by year, I looked at the pistol, and back to him, and I couldn’t give up on the slim hope that remained; the hope that the bullet would permanently take away.
And she’d killed him. At first, slow, then faster, as her anger over my refusal to cooperate grew. When it was over, I was stone silent, cold, and unable to even move. His body…his fucking body…was on the floor. She walked by me, and plucked the gun out of my hand before I could even think to shoot myself. “Pity,” she whispered. “I rather hoped you would have the courage.”
I’d finally stumbled over to his corpse, dropping next to it, and alternately pleading for a small spark of life left, and not for one. I wanted to say I was so damn sorry, but I was afraid of the accusation and pain that I might see. It didn’t matter; she hadn’t left even a moment of life in him.
The next day, Ronon and Lorne had blown the door, finding me sitting by the desiccated body. I know my voice had shook as I asked, “What took you so long?”
Lorne had sworn, and punched the wall. Ronon didn’t say anything. He came over, picked me up, and carried me out of there, and I’d been too everything to protest. I later learned, after dropping me off on the Daedalus, he’d returned, and carried McKay’s remains back on his own. They’d delivered the retrovirus to the Hive ship, and then nuked it after we were rescued. One of us, at any rate.
My eyes drifted off the shards of ceramic, and over to his cot. He’d slept in here some nights. Even as my feet moved forward, I knew I should turn around and leave. On the way, I noticed a pack on the floor by the cot. It was Rodney’s field pack, and there was his laptop. Someone must have gotten it from the Wraith, also. Lorne or Ronon - didn’t matter which. I lifted the laptop out of the Velcro cover, and settled on the cot, lifting the lid and powering it up in one smooth motion.
The last program was still running. The algorithm. I’d have to give this to Zelenka when I was finished. Clicking on c drive, I searched through the folders, not really sure of why I was doing it. “What did you leave for me?” I asked McKay, because just as surely as I knew Rodney liked to leave sarcastic little warning signs all over, I knew he’d left something on his computer in case he died, painfully and horribly, as he always liked to say. I only wish it hadn’t proven to be true.
I found it. There under c: program files/Bad shit/Sheppard.wmv - a video file. I double clicked it, already tensing at the impact I knew was to come, and when the program opened to Rodney McKay’s face too close to the video camera, I found myself instead smiling. That was him. Too close to everything.
“I think this is recording,” he said, irritated. “They always make these things so complicated that a kid can do it, but a thirty something astrophysicist can’t. Nothing like reality to put you in your place,” he cracked.
Rodney was wearing his blue uniform - the one he’d taken to wearing after the first Siege on Atlantis. He had a bandage above his eye, and I knew right away when he’d filmed this. After he’d been submerged under the ocean. He’d almost died then, alone. But he hadn’t. My plan had worked, and we’d saved him in the nick of time, but the pilot he’d been with wasn’t so lucky. I’d known he was shaken. Beckett had kept him for a day afterwards, and then he’d disappeared.
When I finally tracked him down, he asked me for a game of gin rummy, and never mentioned what happened down there again. Now I knew what he’d gone and did.
He laughed nervously on the screen. “I can’t believe you’re watching this, I mean really, how many times do I have to evade death for it to get the point; I don’t want to go. I count at least five times in the past year and a half.” His face twisted into a sardonic grimace. “Guess death didn’t get the point, after all.”
I shook my head. Leave it to McKay to think he could dictate terms to the grim reaper. But, then again, I kind of wish it’d worked.
“So, I leave you everything.”
I admit, I gaped. Everything?
“You’re probably all touched and thinking ‘wow’ but it’s not that much; due payment for putting up with me all these years. My sister gets the life insurance, but everything else, knock yourself out - not literally, but, whatever - you know what I mean.”
The stupid thing is, I never even considered Rodney’s will. I knew he had one; we all did. But the idea of an inheritance from him…I don’t know, maybe it was part of my mental block against the entire process. I pulled my eyes away from the live McKay on the screen to stare at the things in his dead office. Everything was powered down, but his things were still out. The now broken cup, a book, a picture of us shortly after we’d arrived, standing with Carson and Elizabeth on the command deck. He was leaning across, saying something to Grodin. The reaper had been extremely gluttonous when it came to our little expedition. I was getting pretty pissed at him.
“Hey, flyboy, over here - still talking,” called McKay.
I turned back to the screen, and his grin was just like I remembered. Smug, arrogant - I’d give anything to see it in person again.
“Psychic super powers,” he said, waggling his hands. He paused, vulnerability crept across his face, and his hands fell. “It’s actually kind of creepy how well I know you. Let me guess - you were looking at my office; searching for something of me, and full of regrets.
“Oh, don’t look so crushed, it’s sickening. We knew the day would come, hence, this recording. If you haven’t done one for me, I’m suitably insulted from the afterworld, I assure you.”
“Great; I’ve already got a pissed off ghost to haunt me.” Because of course, I hadn’t. I wasn’t the king of ‘plan ahead’. “It’s partly your fault,” I accused the screen McKay. “You always figured a way out - I never believed there’d come a time when you couldn’t…or I couldn’t.” I had to be fair. He’d trusted in me, as much as I’d trusted in him.
"Oh, please, I’m not going to haunt you.”
Was this a joke? Had he programmed his computer to respond? I lifted the laptop, looking for something.
“Put me down.”
I dropped the laptop. What the fuck? I scanned the room, my level of freaked had just ratcheted to heebie jeebie.
“It’s nothing special; a program to respond to actions. Actually, Radek helped me.” The Rodney on the screen leaned forward in his chair and pulled a thin electronics device off the counter. “It’s something we found in a lab. Interactive AI. Don’t worry, I’m really dead. I didn’t have time to fiddle with it much, so once this runs out in -” he looked at his watch, “five more minutes, you’ll have seen the only remaining part of me.” His eyes turned directly on to the monitor - right at me. The teasing arrogance fell away, and he said with too much sadness, “Remember.”
The camera picture faded, and I could hear McKay muttering something about a dead battery, and then the program stopped. He was gone, again. There for a moment, I’d had him.
Peering at the small slide bar on the player, I moused over it, and reset it to halfway, thinking maybe I could get him to interact more with me, but it only played out exactly as it had before, even to the end. Must be a one-time deal. And I’d wasted it by staring at the screen in freaked surprise. Great.
I sighed, and shut the laptop, shoving it off to the side. Less than a month ago, he was here. I tugged the blanket up till I had it wrapped around my shoulders, and leaned against the wall. I was relaxing myself in time, and imagining things as they’d been back then. Nothing but the soft emergency lights were on, the ones that were always on, unless you did an override. I’d kept the main lights off. Somehow I had to put this behind me, to move on, but closing my eyes, all I saw again, was McKay aging rapidly, and holding me with his eyes as he did so.
Chapter Four
When I woke up, I stretched, and bumped my head against the computer. The nightmares had left me alone, and I didn’t know what to think about that. Swallowing down the dryness in my mouth, I cleared my throat, and sat up, trying to disentangle myself from the blanket.
A figure sitting near by scared me into another heart attack. “Do you realize how many people have been looking for you?” Beckett’s voice wasn’t angry, just resigned.
I stared at him in confusion. “Why were they looking for me?”
He leaned forward, till the shadows splayed across his face. “You missed your appointment with Kate. We tried to get you on the radio -”
“I left it in my room,” I answered automatically. “You took me off duty.”
Carson nodded. “Aye, I did.”
Blearily, I tried to focus on the clock across the room. If they’d had people out looking for me, it had to have been a while. I scrubbed tired hands across gritty eyes, and gave up on reading the numbers. It was too dark, and my mind was still sluggish from sleep.
“How long?” Beckett asked.
“How long what?” I repeated. I knew I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“I’m the one that went to your quarters, Colonel.”
I didn’t get it. He was sitting there, tense, and staring at me with something that bordered…reproachful? What’d I do… “Shit,” I swore, as I suddenly remembered. I’d uncapped the bottle of pills, shook out two, and dropped them in the toilet, but a call from Kate to see if I could come to an earlier appointment had distracted me…I hadn’t flushed before rushing to make the new time.
Beckett repeated his question again, his voice as stony as the highlands where he came from. “How long?”
I let my head bang against the wall. Fuck. “I never took any.”
“None?” he exploded. Thrusting the chair back, he stood. “Infirmary, now.”
“You’re just pissed because I didn’t follow your orders,” I replied. I had no intention of going to the infirmary. I didn’t need the pills, and I wasn’t going to take them. “I don’t need them. I’m not depressed.”
“You’re sleeping in your dead friend’s office, wrapped in his blanket.”
I laughed wearily. “What do you think you have in the infirmary that can make this better?”
Beckett stared at me. His face shifted like a chameleon; anger, sadness, acceptance. He turned his head away, and I watched as his face fought off the emotions, and failed. When he spoke, it was shaky. “He would’ve wanted me to take care of you; to see you through this.”
Raggedly, I got to my feet, and put an awkward hand on his shoulder. “You have,” I said, sincere. “But pills aren’t the answer. Put me back on duty - I’m ready now, and I need the distraction.”
“Kate disagrees.”
He’d recovered some semblance of control, but I could still see the glassiness of his eyes reflecting in the poor light in the room. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I couldn’t keep on like this. Seeing Kate during the day, pretending I had things to do, when in reality all I ever did was think about those days on the Hive ship. “I need something to keep my mind off it,” I all but begged. “She thinks I need a solution; what I need is life.” The stillness of limbo was killing me.
Beckett shook his head, but he was staring at me thoughtfully. Finally, he released a long sigh. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll tell Elizabeth you’re clear.”
“Thank you,” I replied earnestly, resisting the urge to run out of the room before he changed his mind. I started to walk away, but stopped when I realized he wasn’t following. “You coming?”
“No,” he said, voice so soft it could’ve floated away with a whisper of a breeze. “I think…” he looked around at the room, lingered for a moment on the mess from the broken cup, before returning back to me. “I’m going to look around for a bit.”
“Yeah,” I said. I understood. “I’ll see you later, Doc.” I left him behind, knowing he was hurting, in a lot of ways just as much. The only difference was the lack of baggage from the way Rodney had died. If I hadn’t had that to carry around, maybe I wouldn’t be floundering, barely keeping my head above the water. Maybe.
OoO
“Doctor Z!” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Pack it up!”
The first mission since I’d told Elizabeth who was going to be McKay’s replacement. I’d resisted the suggestion. Had fought loudly over it with Elizabeth, and even though we’d been in her office, everyone had overheard. I felt bad about that; bad that the rumor mill implied that my problem was with Zelenka, when that could’ve been the farthest from the truth. The truth was I didn’t want Zelenka to die. I didn’t want to speak at his eulogy, or watch him get desiccated by the Wraith, or any other method of dying.
She’d finally told me to shut up; that alone startled me into being quiet. Then she’d told me if I wanted to go through that gate ever again, I’d accept Radek on my team, and I’d damn well better make him feel welcome.
When Radek had walked into the gateroom, kitted out with vests, and a thigh holster, I’d almost turned around and walked out of there. He reminded me, painfully, of a certain other scientist. The same nervous walk, awkward fit of gear, and uncomfortable feel with the gun. He’d smiled tentatively and said, “I am ready, Colonel Sheppard.”
Feeling Elizabeth’s stare on my back, I’d patted him on his shoulder and said, “Looks like it, Doc.” I tried to smile reassuringly, while inside, I was falling apart.
The mission was a cake walk. In and out. I knew Elizabeth had planned it that way. Ronon was impatient, but awkward. Teyla was just sad. It’d been a month, and none of us were over it. I tried to make small talk about Teyla’s trip to the mainland; about Ronon’s hair cut, but all of it died with grunts and short answers. Down deep there was a part of me that wondered if they’d lost the faith in me as their leader. Did they still trust me to get them home alive? The funny thing is, the real question was for me. Did I trust me to get us home alive? The answer wasn’t one I wanted to think about.
The screams are what made me whip my head around, and sent my heart pounding. Wraith! It was the first thing through my mind, and the last thing I wanted to see. Luckily, it wasn’t. But what it was, turned out to be not so good, either. Radek was running full bore towards me, and right on his ass was the biggest animal I’d seen so far in the Pegasus galaxy. It had to have been the size of a horse, but the fangs that I could see even at this distance made me doubt it was wanting to ask Radek to hop on up and take a ride.
I quickly got my P90 up, safety off, and scattered a few rounds above Radek’s head. The animal slowed, uncertain, but when Zelenka stretched the distance between them to what it must have deemed too far, the beast sped up again.
There was no way in hell I was going to go through that gate with anything less than the number we’d left with. I started running towards Radek, and shouted as loud as I could, “Duck, Doc!” When he did, I riddled the animal with my entire clip.
Everything would’ve been just fine then, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Junior apparently had a mom nearby. I picked Doctor Z off the ground, and turned us towards the gate. He was shaking like a tree in hurricane force winds - that shaking that comes from not knowing which way to bend. I shouted at Ronon to dial it up, and then I was flying through the air.
Chapter Five
Waking up was kind of a surprise. When the impact rattled me down to my teeth, and I flew higher than I’d ever done outside of a machine, I’d really rather thought that was the end. Not to say I’d wanted to die, but it might be true to say I didn’t want to live.
A beeping sound sped up, and my mind processed the uncomfortable feeling of EKG pads stuck in my chest hair. The last time I’d woken to those, I’d promised Beckett if anyone ever stuck them on me again without first shaving a small spot, I’d mutiny. He’d humored me, and apparently that was all he did, because I could feel the sticky glue over hair. Taking them off was going to hurt.
“John?”
I moved my eyes, then realized they were still closed. Huh. I opened them, blinked at the bright light until my eyes got the message, and adjusted. Teyla was leaning over me, and she was studying my face to the point where I wondered if I’d lost part of it.
“What?” I asked, trying to move my hand up to check, just in case.
A worried frown marred her face. “You should not have missed the presence of the other animal.”
My hand hadn’t moved, and it took a minute for me to realize it was because of the sling. There wasn’t a cast, instead, some kind of temporary splint, and if I folded my chin to my chest really flat, I could see the edges of deep purplish-black bruising. I knew it should be throbbing, but I wasn’t really feeling a thing. “I missed?” I said.
The frown deepened. “Do you remember what happened?”
I closed my eyes again, trying to reverse back through memories; I’d taken Radek through the gate. Cake walk. Time to go…oh, yeah, there we were. I’d emptied my ammunition clip into Junior, and been surprised by Momma. If I hadn’t been higher than a kite on whatever the drug de jour of the day was, it would’ve bugged me a lot more that Teyla was right. I should’ve caught the presence of the other one.
The sudden spike of fear was accompanied by an increase in beeping. I saw alarm overcome the frown, and then Beckett was running up, his eyes searching me from toe to head. “Radek?” I demanded. I tried to see in the infirmary, but all I saw were empty beds, and that made the beeping even faster.
Beckett’s face blanched when he realized what I thought. “No, no - he’s fine. You took the hit, Colonel,” he explained, fumbling with the heart monitor, until finally, swearing about bloody machines and smacking it hard, it emitted a last whining beep before falling quiet. “Radek is with Elizabeth and Ronon doing the debrief.”
I nodded, trying to relax my breathing, and calm down. God, there for a moment I’d thought -
“I should go,” Teyla interrupted my thoughts. “Rest, John.”
I watched as she left, wanting to call her back, but not being able to. She was bothered by what’d happened, and I saw it written all over her. Did she think I screwed up intentionally, or that I was losing the ability to do my job? And really, was either one of those options better than the other?
There was a deep need to get out of here; I needed to be alone. I needed to talk to Rodney, and God knows, if I did it here, with the built-in audience, it’d be a long, long time till I walked through that gate again.
Beckett breathed deep, and shook his head. “Nothing major was damaged. Broken arm, deep bruises - you’ll live,” he told me. “I’ll release you tomorrow if you improve, but the swelling in that arm has to go down before we can put a permanent cast on. You’ll be off duty for about six weeks.”
Six weeks? I moved my head in frustration on the pillow. Six weeks. I had to blink hard to avoid embarrassing myself. I’d hoped that getting back into a routine, going on missions, doing my job - hoped for it to keep me going, keep me busy, keep my mind off of what I wanted to run away from. I thought I was actually pulling it off…till now. The drugs were blunting everything, and I still felt that crawling panic resurfacing.
A hand on my shoulder drew my eyes upward, and I met Beckett’s gentle look with a scared one of my own. His smile was bittersweet. “I know it’s not fair,” he admitted.
This new openness between us was hard for me. I’d held my emotions tight, sharing little, but Rodney had slithered a way in, and I’d found myself talking to him more than anyone else. We had late nights in front of a movie, in his lab over coffee, lunch, campfire on another world. It wasn’t much - talking about how incredibly shitty it was that Abrams and Gaul had died because of us. Rodney confessed that Dumais’ death had sent him to a new ‘freaked out’ place. I’d confessed Chaya had just plain freaked me out. We talked about what a bastard Kolya was, and how best to plan a practical joke on Beckett. Ronon’s dreadlocks had been the source of more than one idea, but neither one of us was ready to risk it. Ronon was like the tamed bear, and McKay’s idea that entailed sharp scissors was considered for less than a minute, and then we both said life was better lived with all our parts intact. We hadn’t found the conversations to have, the conversations had found us.
But ever since that day when Carson had found me in Rodney’s lab, a wall had been broken. The mortar cracked, gaps exposed, and I found myself trying to be there for him as much as he was trying to be there for me, because he was right. McKay would expect us to do that. We’d both been his friend.
I motioned towards the cup of water on the table. After he brought it over, and helped me drink without wearing it; figures that the arm I broke was my right; I tried to think of a reply to what he’d said without sounding awkward and emotional. “Fair,” I muttered, finally. “I think fair was lost somewhere en route to Atlantis from Earth.”
He didn’t even reply, just did that thing where a person doesn’t really laugh or snort or chuckle, but does a half-laugh, and yet it said it all. “Go back to sleep, son. When you wake up again, we’ll see about getting you released to your room.” He adjusted the bag of fluids running into my hand, and flipped the heart monitor on again, before leaving back to his office.
I closed my eyes, willing the drugs to escort me back into a world without memories. Thankfully, the drugs did their job.
OoO
Beckett was true to his word, and I was discharged to my room with orders to stay in bed, take my pills (and when he said that everything got all awkward and clumsy because the ‘flushing incident’ was still too fresh for both of us). I’d given him a twisted grin and said, “My arm hurts bad enough for me to be a good little boy and take my medicine.” He’d still looked skeptical, but thrust the bottle of pills in my hand and warned he’d be by to check on me tonight. His hovering almost made me feel warm inside again, but before it could gain significant radiance, Ronon arrived.
Initially, I thought it comforting that he’d come to see me. There’d been a painful distance between us since McKay’s death. I hadn’t been able to ask him if he blamed me; I was afraid of what he might say. But then Carson had nodded his head slightly at Ronon, and the big guy had come over and started gathering my clothes, pills and papers. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I accused, softly, because I wasn’t sure my headache could withstand loud voices.
Ronon shook his head at my stupidity. “You’ve got one arm, Sheppard. Stop acting like a baby.”
“Oh,” I replied, feeling stupid.
We walked in silence to my quarters, and once in there, I was surprised by how terrible I felt. My arm was throbbing in its temporary cast, my head ached like I’d come off a weekend binge of booze and coffee. I’d gotten a really big bruise on my stomach, right about where my appendix was, and now the pain there had me almost bent double.
The door opened, and Ronon moved in ahead of me, setting my things on my desk. He fluffed the pillow, pulled back my blankets, and went into the bathroom where I heard water running. Smiling weakly, I was surprised at how much it meant to have someone do those simple things for me. Rodney used to. We took turns; if it wasn’t me recovering, it was him. Our job wasn’t up to OSHA standards. But McKay had also made me laugh. His insults quick-witted and sure. I didn’t realize I was staring at the bed until Ronon was back with a glass of water and observed, “It’s just a bed.”
I shook my head. “No - it’s not,” I said, crawling in, and being careful of my arm.
His brooding forehead wrinkled at my cryptic statement, but he set the water down, and shrugged a hand at it. “Water, take your pills like Doc ordered. Do you need anything else?”
Funny. That question coming from anyone else would’ve seen solicitous. Coming from Ronon, it almost seemed like a dare. “I’m good,” I assured him.
He hesitated, and I’m not sure if it was because he didn’t believe me, or if there was something he wanted to say. Finally, he said, “Okay.” He turned, and headed towards my door. It wasn’t far, so my window of opportunity to ask was shrinking rapidly, but I wanted to ask if he still trusted me to lead - blame it on the pills making me vulnerable, sappy…stupid.
When the door opened, and he stepped through, all I managed to do was let out the deep breath I’d taken. When it shut, I shook my head again at my cowardice. I needed to know what that wall between us meant. Sure, I’d always kept a distance, friendly, but not open. Ronon and I had never sat around the fire, him listening as I admitted to having sex at thirteen with Jamie Rogers, the hottest girl in eighth grade. Part of the reason was probably because Ronon would’ve snickered and said he killed his first Wraith at thirteen; what took you so long?
“Rodney,” I said to the air. “This sucks.”
Chapters 6-10
Author: Kodiak bear
Pairing: None
Rating: M, for language
Warning: Character death; permanent
Summary: When Rodney is killed, Sheppard has to find a way to live.
AN: After I wrote Walk the Line, Shelly begged me to write a different kind of deathfic. One where John has to live after losing McKay, and where there are no miracles. So, Shelly - here you go. You’ve made me grow and learn, and may you always keep challenging me!
The City in the Sea
By Kodiak bear
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
- Edgar Allan Poe
One
“John, you’re not being fair.”
I ground my heels to a dead stop in the hallway, and spun around, angry. She’d followed me from the briefing and confronted me in a public place instead of the semi-private room I’d just left moments before. “What part of ‘he’s a dick’ is being unfair?” I replied, caustically. Clearly, I knew what part.
Elizabeth didn’t even flinch. She stared evenly at the few people openly watching, until they retreated into their own business again, before turning her attention back to me. “Let me see,” she mocked. “The part where you called him a ‘dick’ or maybe the ‘incompetent buffoon’ and ‘self-serving ass’…did I miss one, because I’ve got the report right here.” She held up the manila folder.
“Elizabeth,” I stated, more calmly then I felt. “You asked me to make an assessment, and I did.”
“An assessment, John - not a character assassination,” she stressed.
I was tired, and I could see she was, too. This little face to face wasn’t going to get us anywhere, but I had to ask. “What do you want from me? You want me to lie - pretend he’s Mr. Incredible?”
The frown marred her face, and then it melted. The folder dropped to her side, held loosely in her fingers. “John, stop expecting them to be McKay.”
As the words hit, I closed my eyes. God, I was so fucking tired. McKay - she’d said his name. Not many people dared to do that to my face. When I opened them again, she was still there, and the sympathy made me want to hit something. I leaned in, close, and whispered, “I don’t expect them to be Rodney; that’s the problem.” I didn’t give her time to reply, instead, turned quickly back the way I’d been going initially.
“You need to talk, John,” she called after me.
I kept walking.
OoO
“I tried out a new scientist today.”
My quarters were dark; quiet. I liked it that way lately. Peace. I needed peace, but I knew why I was short with everyone, even Ronon and Teyla. I couldn’t find peace. Not in the dark, in my sleep, in my room or through the gate. “The guy sucked,” I continued, conversationally. “He thought he was God’s gift to every science branch known to man.” I laughed at the memory of the preening kid. Fresh out of college and full of memorized facts and useless information. And fuck him for reminding me of another certain arrogant scientist who’d thought the same thing.
Invulnerable.
Slamming the basketball against the wall, I swore, “Invulnerable, my ass.”
I threw it again, harder than I should’ve, and the ball bounced high, over my head, and I was too tired to roll off the bed and retrieve it. Didn’t matter anyway. The clock showed it was past time for me to sleep, but like everything else lately, sleep was hard.
Dreams…dreams were nightmares, and I couldn’t get away from them. Nothing like closing your eyes and being transported back to that instant when your best friend had his life sucked out of him. And then reliving it over and over and over again, as if the first time hadn’t been enough.
When Lorne arrived with Ronon, they’d busted in the room, and found Rodney’s lifeless corpse beside me. If they’d taken just one more day to find us, I wouldn’t be stuck living this pain every single day. One day longer. Then again, if they’d been a day earlier, I wouldn’t be living this pain, either. Better to think the former, because the latter only made me murderous.
I don’t remember much about the trip back to Atlantis. The week after. I guess I went a little crazy there for a while, and Carson sedated me. I often found myself wondering if maybe I’d had the right idea after all. Go nuts, get drugged, and not have to deal with any of this.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t lost friends before; I had. But not like this, and not…like this.
“You know the worst part about today?” I rolled and went after the ball. Sleep wasn’t gonna happen. “The kid had the guts to tell me that I had a complex about you. That no one could ever live up to the ‘great McKay’ and maybe it was past time for me to start accepting the status quo.” I laughed unpleasantly. “Twenty-two fucking years old, if a day, and he’s telling me how to handle my life.”
The ball pounded against metal with a satisfying smack. Maybe I should head to the gym - but as quickly as I considered that idea, I tossed it. Too many people. Too many Ronon’s and Teyla’s, more to the point. I locked my doors, and kept them out, but I couldn’t always hide behind locked doors. They were driving me nuts. Hell - everyone was.
‘Are you okay, Colonel’ or ‘if you need to talk, Sheppard’ better yet, the most annoying one, ‘get some sleep, John’.
“Did you catch the eulogy I gave you?” It’d been damn moving. Even impressed myself. “I made Kirk proud - something about ‘you were the most human human’, figured if anyone earned it, you did.” He’d saved my life, after all. I supposed a damn good eulogy was the least I could do.
Screw it. I threw the ball again, this time intentionally savage, and it rebounded far overhead. I pushed myself off my cot, and ignoring my boots, padded into the hall, peeking for the very people I hoped to avoid. I needed the sea tonight.
Two
The balcony was cold; salt spray didn’t reach this high up, but the air was chilled from below, and the tang was on my tongue. I knew if I stuck it out, I’d taste eternity. At first, I stood at the railing, looking out at the whitecaps. There was a gusty breeze blowing over the waters and buffeting the city. After my legs began to ache from standing, I wandered to the edge of the wall that met with the railing, and slid down, sitting with my legs splayed loosely in front of me.
It wasn’t as dark as it should’ve been. The lights of Atlantis let off a glow that bled into the water below, a painter’s palette where the black mixed with yellow. The defining line between was vague and soft.
I let my head fall back against the wall, and closed my eyes. A gust of wind blew across my face, and I smiled. “I shouldn’t be talking to you; people will think I’m nuts.”
Truthfully, I couldn’t remember exactly when I’d started, but I think it was after Beckett stopped the sedation. Maybe before...there was a part of me that knew I was turning into a wreck, just as they’d feared I would. But there was another part of me fighting it; clawing and shouting. I didn’t want to be in this black place, this painful place.
It wasn’t just that I missed McKay. He’d been my friend; that was expected. It was the way he’d died. It would always be the way he died.
“I’m going to stay out here until the sun rises,” I murmured. Maybe it would light the empty pit growing inside of me. God, something needed to. I wanted to feel the warmth; see the light.
At some point, I must have dozed, but when I woke, the sun had already risen, and I was curled on my side trying to stay warm. I felt lousy, and the sunshine must have passed over me, because I couldn’t feel it.
“John?”
I uncurled my body, and rolled into a sitting position, stretching protesting limbs. Knowing I probably looked as bad as I felt, I sighed. This wasn’t going to be pretty. “I’m not late yet,” I said. Judging from the position of the sun in the sky, it was still early, and the briefing wasn’t scheduled till ten.
Her look was painful. She moved to my side, and slid down, the electronic notepad in her hands blinking ‘send’ on an email she’d drafted but I couldn’t tell who the intended recipient was. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Elizabeth asked. “Teyla and Ronon are worried. I’m worried.”
The truth was there, on the tip of my tongue, and I almost took her open invitation… “It’s only been two weeks,” I deflected instead. “I’m just…having problems sleeping.”
Two weeks. The first week had been in Beckett’s care, the second week I’d spent on missions pushing myself to choose a replacement, despite everyone protesting. It was too soon, they’d said. Ronon had accused me with his silent stares, while Teyla had just seemed to collapse within herself.
“Problems?” she echoed. Elizabeth shook her head. “John, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
Wasn’t that normal? Wasn’t grief supposed to throw off sleeping, eating - living patterns? Wasn’t it wrong to expect life to carry on as normal when someone disappeared violently from your daily routine? I’d done that after Dex and Mitch died because I had to. I wish I knew how to do that again. I was doing my job, getting through the day, but there was a maniacal edge to me, and I knew it. And I knew it was also because of the secret I was holding.
I opened my mouth to spew any hundred of false assurances. If I couldn’t tell the truth, maybe at least I could lie. But the roiling hot edge of grief surged, and I turned to the water. When a few moments passed, I knew I had control again, but I kept staring out; away. “It’s only up from where I’m standing,” I admitted. I wasn’t denying I’d hit rock bottom. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“I’ve sent Carson an email.”
Her tone of voice made me frown at the water. I turned, and studied her before asking, “And?”
“I told him you’re on your way to see him.”
“I’m not.”
She climbed to her feet, and her sadness was palpable. “Yes, you are.”
I held her look, pleading without words for her not to do this, but she remained steady. I grimaced, “I just needed time.” But I stood as well, surprised at how deep the pain in my legs went. Guess lying in the cold night without even a blanket had been stupid. I aborted a bitter chuckle. Stupid. He would’ve been the one to tell me that. The thickening in my throat was bad, and I needed to get away. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I got one last dig back. There was a reason I hadn’t been to see Beckett since he’d released me. I always had my reasons. Before she had a chance to reply, to tell me how this was for my own good, I strode around her, and left the balcony.
OoO
When I entered the infirmary, he was waiting. The week away hadn’t changed anything. Hadn’t erased the haunted look on Beckett’s face. I debated on turning around and leaving. If Elizabeth wanted to foist this on me, make her do the dirty work.
“Lad -” Carson breathed.
“I’m here because I was ordered to, not because I have any problems I need you to treat.” I laid it out, right from the get-go. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to look at Beckett and see his haggard face. Every time I looked at him, I saw the unspoken begging for why. There was no why - it’d happened to more people before McKay; the more appropriate question was ‘why not’.
“One look at you, and I know you’ve got problems.” The harsh accusation was out of character for the usually soft-spoken doctor.
I knew my forehead was crumpling; two weeks. It’d been only two weeks. “Help…” I stuttered it out even as my brain tried to tell my mouth no. But, God, I wanted help… “Take it away,” I whispered.
Beckett’s nostrils flared, and his face was on the verge of crumpling along with mine. "Nobody can take it away,” he croaked.
He thought I was talking about the pain; the grief. I was talking about the memory. I didn’t want to close my eyes and see McKay’s life being drained anymore. To watch that rugged stubborn face twisted in horror, and begin to age years in seconds. An anger so primal rose up, and twisted inside me. I could feel my breaths coming in harsh, rapid pulls. I curled my hand into a fist, and spun, punching the wall. “That’s not what I meant!” I raged - because I couldn’t tell him what I meant. I couldn’t…I kicked at a tray of instruments, the defibrillator.
“Colonel!” Carson swore and then shouted, “I need some help in here - bring me .04 Lorazepam.”
The order stilled my body. I looked at my hand in numb surprise. It was bleeding; the knuckles split open, and I didn’t feel a thing. The defibrillator lay in a broken pile on the floor, the table it’d been resting on now canted over the top right edge. I swallowed down the bile over what I’d done. “I don’t need it,” I protested. The rage had evaporated as quickly as it’d come.
A nurse handed the hypodermic to Beckett, staring sadly at the mess. I felt the rage whisper again. Those fucking sad looks - every where I turned. Why couldn’t they stop? I was a big boy, had seen death, lived with death - why the hell was this one any different? Why was this one causing me to come undone…but the reason was one I didn’t like to face. It was also not something I’d share. With anyone.
Beckett approached me warily. “I’m sorry, son, but I’m going to have to insist.”
“Don’t,” I asked, my voice cracking. I couldn’t strike out at him; not him. He was McKay’s friend, as much as he’d been mine. Having to see the devastation I felt mirrored in Beckett’s entire being…I just wanted to leave; escape.
“We can do this two ways; willingly, and you get to lay down first, or I tackle you, and call for help to haul you into a bed…that way involves restraints, by the way.”
I searched his face for any sign of weakness; any sign that I could sway him from this course of action, but all I saw was the same pain, tempered by his lack of memory of the actual death. Damn it, damn it, damn it! Closing my eyes to shut out the sight, I murmured, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Beckett heard, and thought I meant him. “Bloody hell, Colonel - d’ye think I enjoy seeing you come undone? None of us does,” he protested, angry.
I almost replied that I wasn’t talking to him, and then realized that’d probably just mean I’d get to be his guest for even longer, and I didn’t want that. It was time for damage control. I re-opened my eyes, surprised at how bright the infirmary was. “Where do you want me?” I asked, and a small part of me was eager for the shot. Eager to lose myself for a while in the drugged no-man’s land, where Rodney’s face wouldn’t beg me to end it.
I forced my feet to go where Beckett pointed. The bed was in a corner, and after I got into the scrubs he’d handed over, not even letting me change alone, I climbed in. He took my arm in a firm grip, and swabbed it with alcohol. After he gave the injection, he breathed deep. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said. “Sorry that we haven’t been able to help you like we should’ve.” The drug was fast acting, and the lethargy tugged at me, promising rest, finally. “But we will now…no more running; for any of us.” As I drifted into the sweet embrace of darkness, I cringed at Carson’s promise. I wanted to run.
Chapter Three
“Start at the point when you woke up in the cell, Colonel.”
Kate was perched in her chair, pulled away from the desk so that she could sit exactly opposite of me, with no barriers. I wanted barriers. She thought it helped; I thought it was claustrophobic. I’d woken from the sedative, wanting to go to my room and sleep it the rest of the way off, only to find that I was removed from duty. Beckett had apologized, his words hollow, saying he never should’ve put me back on before. It’d been too soon and he blamed my current condition on his own bad judgment. I’d almost confessed, then, just to rid the man of his self-recriminations.
“It’s in the report,” I said, dully.
She crossed her legs, and tilted her head, lips pursed in sympathy. “Actually, it’s not.”
Confusion reigned for a brief moment before I sighed. “I haven’t written it yet.” Stupid. Every mistake I made kept nailing my coffin tighter. “I forgot.”
“That’s understandable.”
The bitter chuckle was short. “No,” I said. “It’s not. I meant to do it days ago.”
She adjusted my file on her lap, and leaned forward. “Colonel, do you realize that you are the only one expecting yourself to jump back in the saddle, so to speak? You’re the one trying to pretend you weren’t captured, interrogated, had your friend and co-worker murdered in front of you because you wouldn’t talk.”
“I couldn’t,” I replied, voice hoarse.
The smile was understanding, comforting…clinical. “Of course not.”
I sat in the chair, not knowing what to say. She didn’t understand, couldn’t. After a few moments of silence stretching tautly between us, she leaned back. “I think we’ve done enough for today, Colonel.” Her eyebrow arched as she eyed me. “Are you taking your medicine?”
Beckett had discharged me, but only on the condition that I willingly took my happy pills. I agreed, but every day I was flushing them. They made me sick, tense, cotton-headed. “Sure,” I said, but inwardly flinched because she’d read my hesitation for the lie that it was.
“John,” she sighed. “It’s for your own good.”
“I’m a big boy, Doc. I can decide what’s good for me on my own.”
I was afraid she’d call Carson. Tell him I wasn’t following orders, and turn me over to him, but she shook her head. “No, you can’t. Not right now - but I’ll let you keep your little secret, unless you fail to make progress in our sessions, am I understood, Colonel?”
“Like crystal,” I replied.
Leaving her office, I headed to a place I shouldn’t. People stared. Part of that was my fault. I was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, figured what the hell, right? If I was off duty, might as well make the most of it. But instead, all I did was keep reminding everyone I ran into that McKay had died, and I was damaged. The only thing they didn’t know was just how much.
When I walked into Rodney’s lab, it was quiet. I’d been here before, right after Beckett had released me after the rescue. No one had touched his things yet, and I drifted over to his desk. The coffee cup was still there. I smiled ruefully remembering that last cup. We were getting ready for our mission, or rather, I’d been getting ready. McKay had gotten tied up working on a compression program. He was still trying to figure out a way to preserve more of the database in case we had to blow the city and beat a hasty retreat.
I found him typing furiously over his keyboard, the mostly full cup sitting forgotten by his side on the desk. I’d pulled up a chair, drank his coffee and waited. By the time he finished, he reached for the cup, found it empty, looked over at me and scowled. “You drank my coffee.”
The smile I had was soft, and slow, and full of feigned innocence. “No, I didn’t. You must’ve drank it while in your work-induced coma.”
“I’d remember drinking my coffee.”
I snorted, and folded my arms, leaning back in the chair and swiveling. “You can’t even remember to be in the gateroom on time.”
A look of dawning realization twisted into annoyance. “So you drank my coffee to get back at me?”
Smirking, I stood. “No, I drank your coffee because I was thirsty.” I shut the cover on his laptop. “Let’s go before Elizabeth sends a search party after us.”
Lifting the cup now, looking at the mocha crescent moon in the bottom…I ached. If he’d been on time, or if I’d stayed, and got him another cup of fucking coffee and discussed his algorithm…if if if, it’d always be ‘if’. Two letter word that held more power than all the letters in the alphabet combined.
“I couldn’t do it, you know,” I said to the desk. To the chair where he’d be sitting if… “I’m not sure I can wrap my mind around what that says about me -”
Obviously, he had known I couldn’t do it. His eyes had found mine, bluer than I’d ever seen them before, and damn if he hadn’t understood. But I didn’t…son of a bitch, I didn’t! I threw the coffee cup across the room, listening as the ceramic shattered into a hundred pieces, just like me.
I’d done it for Sumner, a guy I could barely stand, but I hadn’t been able to do it for Rodney, a guy that I considered to be my best friend. What kind of fucked up statement did that say about me? When it mattered, I couldn’t find the courage. That’s what I wouldn’t tell them. It was the secret I couldn’t tell.
I’d told the truth to a point. We’d been captured off-world, that much everyone knew, because Ronon and Teyla had been with us. The Wraith queen had interrogated us together, but something allowed us to resist the mind probes. Rodney thought it was the ATA gene, and when we escaped, he’d wanted to have Carson look into it. When the queen had come back a third time, she’d pulled Rodney into the middle, and latched on. She only tasted at first, and I’d wondered why, when a Wraith warrior walked in and handed me my gun. McKay had been shaking, but he hadn’t pleaded for his life. Somehow, staring at me, he’d found the guts he needed. Horrified, but not begging. I only wish I could’ve said the same.
“Tell me the location of Earth, or your friend dies,” she’d sneered.
When I’d asked why they’d given me the pistol, she’d taken a little bit more of McKay and whispered seductively, “Because you fail to have the courage to do what you must - if you shoot me, your friend dies. If you do nothing, your friend dies. If you tell me where Earth is, he’ll live. If you shoot him, I will lose my leverage over you, and the location of Earth, but you do not have the strength of mind to do what you should.”
She had played me like a guitar, though I still didn’t know what she’d hoped to accomplish with her mind games. Three warriors had kept stunners pointed on me; I couldn’t take her out, because she was right. She’d drain Rodney and regenerate her damaged parts. If she kept up draining Rodney, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t beg for her to stop. To give her something that would make her stop…time; we needed more time for the rescue to come. There was always a rescue. We’d done it before; Rodney had done it for me before. They wouldn’t let us down, I knew it, so we only needed to hold on. If I shot McKay, and they beamed us out, then there’d be no rescue…I couldn’t do it. Even as she drained him, year by year, I looked at the pistol, and back to him, and I couldn’t give up on the slim hope that remained; the hope that the bullet would permanently take away.
And she’d killed him. At first, slow, then faster, as her anger over my refusal to cooperate grew. When it was over, I was stone silent, cold, and unable to even move. His body…his fucking body…was on the floor. She walked by me, and plucked the gun out of my hand before I could even think to shoot myself. “Pity,” she whispered. “I rather hoped you would have the courage.”
I’d finally stumbled over to his corpse, dropping next to it, and alternately pleading for a small spark of life left, and not for one. I wanted to say I was so damn sorry, but I was afraid of the accusation and pain that I might see. It didn’t matter; she hadn’t left even a moment of life in him.
The next day, Ronon and Lorne had blown the door, finding me sitting by the desiccated body. I know my voice had shook as I asked, “What took you so long?”
Lorne had sworn, and punched the wall. Ronon didn’t say anything. He came over, picked me up, and carried me out of there, and I’d been too everything to protest. I later learned, after dropping me off on the Daedalus, he’d returned, and carried McKay’s remains back on his own. They’d delivered the retrovirus to the Hive ship, and then nuked it after we were rescued. One of us, at any rate.
My eyes drifted off the shards of ceramic, and over to his cot. He’d slept in here some nights. Even as my feet moved forward, I knew I should turn around and leave. On the way, I noticed a pack on the floor by the cot. It was Rodney’s field pack, and there was his laptop. Someone must have gotten it from the Wraith, also. Lorne or Ronon - didn’t matter which. I lifted the laptop out of the Velcro cover, and settled on the cot, lifting the lid and powering it up in one smooth motion.
The last program was still running. The algorithm. I’d have to give this to Zelenka when I was finished. Clicking on c drive, I searched through the folders, not really sure of why I was doing it. “What did you leave for me?” I asked McKay, because just as surely as I knew Rodney liked to leave sarcastic little warning signs all over, I knew he’d left something on his computer in case he died, painfully and horribly, as he always liked to say. I only wish it hadn’t proven to be true.
I found it. There under c: program files/Bad shit/Sheppard.wmv - a video file. I double clicked it, already tensing at the impact I knew was to come, and when the program opened to Rodney McKay’s face too close to the video camera, I found myself instead smiling. That was him. Too close to everything.
“I think this is recording,” he said, irritated. “They always make these things so complicated that a kid can do it, but a thirty something astrophysicist can’t. Nothing like reality to put you in your place,” he cracked.
Rodney was wearing his blue uniform - the one he’d taken to wearing after the first Siege on Atlantis. He had a bandage above his eye, and I knew right away when he’d filmed this. After he’d been submerged under the ocean. He’d almost died then, alone. But he hadn’t. My plan had worked, and we’d saved him in the nick of time, but the pilot he’d been with wasn’t so lucky. I’d known he was shaken. Beckett had kept him for a day afterwards, and then he’d disappeared.
When I finally tracked him down, he asked me for a game of gin rummy, and never mentioned what happened down there again. Now I knew what he’d gone and did.
He laughed nervously on the screen. “I can’t believe you’re watching this, I mean really, how many times do I have to evade death for it to get the point; I don’t want to go. I count at least five times in the past year and a half.” His face twisted into a sardonic grimace. “Guess death didn’t get the point, after all.”
I shook my head. Leave it to McKay to think he could dictate terms to the grim reaper. But, then again, I kind of wish it’d worked.
“So, I leave you everything.”
I admit, I gaped. Everything?
“You’re probably all touched and thinking ‘wow’ but it’s not that much; due payment for putting up with me all these years. My sister gets the life insurance, but everything else, knock yourself out - not literally, but, whatever - you know what I mean.”
The stupid thing is, I never even considered Rodney’s will. I knew he had one; we all did. But the idea of an inheritance from him…I don’t know, maybe it was part of my mental block against the entire process. I pulled my eyes away from the live McKay on the screen to stare at the things in his dead office. Everything was powered down, but his things were still out. The now broken cup, a book, a picture of us shortly after we’d arrived, standing with Carson and Elizabeth on the command deck. He was leaning across, saying something to Grodin. The reaper had been extremely gluttonous when it came to our little expedition. I was getting pretty pissed at him.
“Hey, flyboy, over here - still talking,” called McKay.
I turned back to the screen, and his grin was just like I remembered. Smug, arrogant - I’d give anything to see it in person again.
“Psychic super powers,” he said, waggling his hands. He paused, vulnerability crept across his face, and his hands fell. “It’s actually kind of creepy how well I know you. Let me guess - you were looking at my office; searching for something of me, and full of regrets.
“Oh, don’t look so crushed, it’s sickening. We knew the day would come, hence, this recording. If you haven’t done one for me, I’m suitably insulted from the afterworld, I assure you.”
“Great; I’ve already got a pissed off ghost to haunt me.” Because of course, I hadn’t. I wasn’t the king of ‘plan ahead’. “It’s partly your fault,” I accused the screen McKay. “You always figured a way out - I never believed there’d come a time when you couldn’t…or I couldn’t.” I had to be fair. He’d trusted in me, as much as I’d trusted in him.
"Oh, please, I’m not going to haunt you.”
Was this a joke? Had he programmed his computer to respond? I lifted the laptop, looking for something.
“Put me down.”
I dropped the laptop. What the fuck? I scanned the room, my level of freaked had just ratcheted to heebie jeebie.
“It’s nothing special; a program to respond to actions. Actually, Radek helped me.” The Rodney on the screen leaned forward in his chair and pulled a thin electronics device off the counter. “It’s something we found in a lab. Interactive AI. Don’t worry, I’m really dead. I didn’t have time to fiddle with it much, so once this runs out in -” he looked at his watch, “five more minutes, you’ll have seen the only remaining part of me.” His eyes turned directly on to the monitor - right at me. The teasing arrogance fell away, and he said with too much sadness, “Remember.”
The camera picture faded, and I could hear McKay muttering something about a dead battery, and then the program stopped. He was gone, again. There for a moment, I’d had him.
Peering at the small slide bar on the player, I moused over it, and reset it to halfway, thinking maybe I could get him to interact more with me, but it only played out exactly as it had before, even to the end. Must be a one-time deal. And I’d wasted it by staring at the screen in freaked surprise. Great.
I sighed, and shut the laptop, shoving it off to the side. Less than a month ago, he was here. I tugged the blanket up till I had it wrapped around my shoulders, and leaned against the wall. I was relaxing myself in time, and imagining things as they’d been back then. Nothing but the soft emergency lights were on, the ones that were always on, unless you did an override. I’d kept the main lights off. Somehow I had to put this behind me, to move on, but closing my eyes, all I saw again, was McKay aging rapidly, and holding me with his eyes as he did so.
Chapter Four
When I woke up, I stretched, and bumped my head against the computer. The nightmares had left me alone, and I didn’t know what to think about that. Swallowing down the dryness in my mouth, I cleared my throat, and sat up, trying to disentangle myself from the blanket.
A figure sitting near by scared me into another heart attack. “Do you realize how many people have been looking for you?” Beckett’s voice wasn’t angry, just resigned.
I stared at him in confusion. “Why were they looking for me?”
He leaned forward, till the shadows splayed across his face. “You missed your appointment with Kate. We tried to get you on the radio -”
“I left it in my room,” I answered automatically. “You took me off duty.”
Carson nodded. “Aye, I did.”
Blearily, I tried to focus on the clock across the room. If they’d had people out looking for me, it had to have been a while. I scrubbed tired hands across gritty eyes, and gave up on reading the numbers. It was too dark, and my mind was still sluggish from sleep.
“How long?” Beckett asked.
“How long what?” I repeated. I knew I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“I’m the one that went to your quarters, Colonel.”
I didn’t get it. He was sitting there, tense, and staring at me with something that bordered…reproachful? What’d I do… “Shit,” I swore, as I suddenly remembered. I’d uncapped the bottle of pills, shook out two, and dropped them in the toilet, but a call from Kate to see if I could come to an earlier appointment had distracted me…I hadn’t flushed before rushing to make the new time.
Beckett repeated his question again, his voice as stony as the highlands where he came from. “How long?”
I let my head bang against the wall. Fuck. “I never took any.”
“None?” he exploded. Thrusting the chair back, he stood. “Infirmary, now.”
“You’re just pissed because I didn’t follow your orders,” I replied. I had no intention of going to the infirmary. I didn’t need the pills, and I wasn’t going to take them. “I don’t need them. I’m not depressed.”
“You’re sleeping in your dead friend’s office, wrapped in his blanket.”
I laughed wearily. “What do you think you have in the infirmary that can make this better?”
Beckett stared at me. His face shifted like a chameleon; anger, sadness, acceptance. He turned his head away, and I watched as his face fought off the emotions, and failed. When he spoke, it was shaky. “He would’ve wanted me to take care of you; to see you through this.”
Raggedly, I got to my feet, and put an awkward hand on his shoulder. “You have,” I said, sincere. “But pills aren’t the answer. Put me back on duty - I’m ready now, and I need the distraction.”
“Kate disagrees.”
He’d recovered some semblance of control, but I could still see the glassiness of his eyes reflecting in the poor light in the room. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I couldn’t keep on like this. Seeing Kate during the day, pretending I had things to do, when in reality all I ever did was think about those days on the Hive ship. “I need something to keep my mind off it,” I all but begged. “She thinks I need a solution; what I need is life.” The stillness of limbo was killing me.
Beckett shook his head, but he was staring at me thoughtfully. Finally, he released a long sigh. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll tell Elizabeth you’re clear.”
“Thank you,” I replied earnestly, resisting the urge to run out of the room before he changed his mind. I started to walk away, but stopped when I realized he wasn’t following. “You coming?”
“No,” he said, voice so soft it could’ve floated away with a whisper of a breeze. “I think…” he looked around at the room, lingered for a moment on the mess from the broken cup, before returning back to me. “I’m going to look around for a bit.”
“Yeah,” I said. I understood. “I’ll see you later, Doc.” I left him behind, knowing he was hurting, in a lot of ways just as much. The only difference was the lack of baggage from the way Rodney had died. If I hadn’t had that to carry around, maybe I wouldn’t be floundering, barely keeping my head above the water. Maybe.
OoO
“Doctor Z!” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Pack it up!”
The first mission since I’d told Elizabeth who was going to be McKay’s replacement. I’d resisted the suggestion. Had fought loudly over it with Elizabeth, and even though we’d been in her office, everyone had overheard. I felt bad about that; bad that the rumor mill implied that my problem was with Zelenka, when that could’ve been the farthest from the truth. The truth was I didn’t want Zelenka to die. I didn’t want to speak at his eulogy, or watch him get desiccated by the Wraith, or any other method of dying.
She’d finally told me to shut up; that alone startled me into being quiet. Then she’d told me if I wanted to go through that gate ever again, I’d accept Radek on my team, and I’d damn well better make him feel welcome.
When Radek had walked into the gateroom, kitted out with vests, and a thigh holster, I’d almost turned around and walked out of there. He reminded me, painfully, of a certain other scientist. The same nervous walk, awkward fit of gear, and uncomfortable feel with the gun. He’d smiled tentatively and said, “I am ready, Colonel Sheppard.”
Feeling Elizabeth’s stare on my back, I’d patted him on his shoulder and said, “Looks like it, Doc.” I tried to smile reassuringly, while inside, I was falling apart.
The mission was a cake walk. In and out. I knew Elizabeth had planned it that way. Ronon was impatient, but awkward. Teyla was just sad. It’d been a month, and none of us were over it. I tried to make small talk about Teyla’s trip to the mainland; about Ronon’s hair cut, but all of it died with grunts and short answers. Down deep there was a part of me that wondered if they’d lost the faith in me as their leader. Did they still trust me to get them home alive? The funny thing is, the real question was for me. Did I trust me to get us home alive? The answer wasn’t one I wanted to think about.
The screams are what made me whip my head around, and sent my heart pounding. Wraith! It was the first thing through my mind, and the last thing I wanted to see. Luckily, it wasn’t. But what it was, turned out to be not so good, either. Radek was running full bore towards me, and right on his ass was the biggest animal I’d seen so far in the Pegasus galaxy. It had to have been the size of a horse, but the fangs that I could see even at this distance made me doubt it was wanting to ask Radek to hop on up and take a ride.
I quickly got my P90 up, safety off, and scattered a few rounds above Radek’s head. The animal slowed, uncertain, but when Zelenka stretched the distance between them to what it must have deemed too far, the beast sped up again.
There was no way in hell I was going to go through that gate with anything less than the number we’d left with. I started running towards Radek, and shouted as loud as I could, “Duck, Doc!” When he did, I riddled the animal with my entire clip.
Everything would’ve been just fine then, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Junior apparently had a mom nearby. I picked Doctor Z off the ground, and turned us towards the gate. He was shaking like a tree in hurricane force winds - that shaking that comes from not knowing which way to bend. I shouted at Ronon to dial it up, and then I was flying through the air.
Chapter Five
Waking up was kind of a surprise. When the impact rattled me down to my teeth, and I flew higher than I’d ever done outside of a machine, I’d really rather thought that was the end. Not to say I’d wanted to die, but it might be true to say I didn’t want to live.
A beeping sound sped up, and my mind processed the uncomfortable feeling of EKG pads stuck in my chest hair. The last time I’d woken to those, I’d promised Beckett if anyone ever stuck them on me again without first shaving a small spot, I’d mutiny. He’d humored me, and apparently that was all he did, because I could feel the sticky glue over hair. Taking them off was going to hurt.
“John?”
I moved my eyes, then realized they were still closed. Huh. I opened them, blinked at the bright light until my eyes got the message, and adjusted. Teyla was leaning over me, and she was studying my face to the point where I wondered if I’d lost part of it.
“What?” I asked, trying to move my hand up to check, just in case.
A worried frown marred her face. “You should not have missed the presence of the other animal.”
My hand hadn’t moved, and it took a minute for me to realize it was because of the sling. There wasn’t a cast, instead, some kind of temporary splint, and if I folded my chin to my chest really flat, I could see the edges of deep purplish-black bruising. I knew it should be throbbing, but I wasn’t really feeling a thing. “I missed?” I said.
The frown deepened. “Do you remember what happened?”
I closed my eyes again, trying to reverse back through memories; I’d taken Radek through the gate. Cake walk. Time to go…oh, yeah, there we were. I’d emptied my ammunition clip into Junior, and been surprised by Momma. If I hadn’t been higher than a kite on whatever the drug de jour of the day was, it would’ve bugged me a lot more that Teyla was right. I should’ve caught the presence of the other one.
The sudden spike of fear was accompanied by an increase in beeping. I saw alarm overcome the frown, and then Beckett was running up, his eyes searching me from toe to head. “Radek?” I demanded. I tried to see in the infirmary, but all I saw were empty beds, and that made the beeping even faster.
Beckett’s face blanched when he realized what I thought. “No, no - he’s fine. You took the hit, Colonel,” he explained, fumbling with the heart monitor, until finally, swearing about bloody machines and smacking it hard, it emitted a last whining beep before falling quiet. “Radek is with Elizabeth and Ronon doing the debrief.”
I nodded, trying to relax my breathing, and calm down. God, there for a moment I’d thought -
“I should go,” Teyla interrupted my thoughts. “Rest, John.”
I watched as she left, wanting to call her back, but not being able to. She was bothered by what’d happened, and I saw it written all over her. Did she think I screwed up intentionally, or that I was losing the ability to do my job? And really, was either one of those options better than the other?
There was a deep need to get out of here; I needed to be alone. I needed to talk to Rodney, and God knows, if I did it here, with the built-in audience, it’d be a long, long time till I walked through that gate again.
Beckett breathed deep, and shook his head. “Nothing major was damaged. Broken arm, deep bruises - you’ll live,” he told me. “I’ll release you tomorrow if you improve, but the swelling in that arm has to go down before we can put a permanent cast on. You’ll be off duty for about six weeks.”
Six weeks? I moved my head in frustration on the pillow. Six weeks. I had to blink hard to avoid embarrassing myself. I’d hoped that getting back into a routine, going on missions, doing my job - hoped for it to keep me going, keep me busy, keep my mind off of what I wanted to run away from. I thought I was actually pulling it off…till now. The drugs were blunting everything, and I still felt that crawling panic resurfacing.
A hand on my shoulder drew my eyes upward, and I met Beckett’s gentle look with a scared one of my own. His smile was bittersweet. “I know it’s not fair,” he admitted.
This new openness between us was hard for me. I’d held my emotions tight, sharing little, but Rodney had slithered a way in, and I’d found myself talking to him more than anyone else. We had late nights in front of a movie, in his lab over coffee, lunch, campfire on another world. It wasn’t much - talking about how incredibly shitty it was that Abrams and Gaul had died because of us. Rodney confessed that Dumais’ death had sent him to a new ‘freaked out’ place. I’d confessed Chaya had just plain freaked me out. We talked about what a bastard Kolya was, and how best to plan a practical joke on Beckett. Ronon’s dreadlocks had been the source of more than one idea, but neither one of us was ready to risk it. Ronon was like the tamed bear, and McKay’s idea that entailed sharp scissors was considered for less than a minute, and then we both said life was better lived with all our parts intact. We hadn’t found the conversations to have, the conversations had found us.
But ever since that day when Carson had found me in Rodney’s lab, a wall had been broken. The mortar cracked, gaps exposed, and I found myself trying to be there for him as much as he was trying to be there for me, because he was right. McKay would expect us to do that. We’d both been his friend.
I motioned towards the cup of water on the table. After he brought it over, and helped me drink without wearing it; figures that the arm I broke was my right; I tried to think of a reply to what he’d said without sounding awkward and emotional. “Fair,” I muttered, finally. “I think fair was lost somewhere en route to Atlantis from Earth.”
He didn’t even reply, just did that thing where a person doesn’t really laugh or snort or chuckle, but does a half-laugh, and yet it said it all. “Go back to sleep, son. When you wake up again, we’ll see about getting you released to your room.” He adjusted the bag of fluids running into my hand, and flipped the heart monitor on again, before leaving back to his office.
I closed my eyes, willing the drugs to escort me back into a world without memories. Thankfully, the drugs did their job.
OoO
Beckett was true to his word, and I was discharged to my room with orders to stay in bed, take my pills (and when he said that everything got all awkward and clumsy because the ‘flushing incident’ was still too fresh for both of us). I’d given him a twisted grin and said, “My arm hurts bad enough for me to be a good little boy and take my medicine.” He’d still looked skeptical, but thrust the bottle of pills in my hand and warned he’d be by to check on me tonight. His hovering almost made me feel warm inside again, but before it could gain significant radiance, Ronon arrived.
Initially, I thought it comforting that he’d come to see me. There’d been a painful distance between us since McKay’s death. I hadn’t been able to ask him if he blamed me; I was afraid of what he might say. But then Carson had nodded his head slightly at Ronon, and the big guy had come over and started gathering my clothes, pills and papers. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I accused, softly, because I wasn’t sure my headache could withstand loud voices.
Ronon shook his head at my stupidity. “You’ve got one arm, Sheppard. Stop acting like a baby.”
“Oh,” I replied, feeling stupid.
We walked in silence to my quarters, and once in there, I was surprised by how terrible I felt. My arm was throbbing in its temporary cast, my head ached like I’d come off a weekend binge of booze and coffee. I’d gotten a really big bruise on my stomach, right about where my appendix was, and now the pain there had me almost bent double.
The door opened, and Ronon moved in ahead of me, setting my things on my desk. He fluffed the pillow, pulled back my blankets, and went into the bathroom where I heard water running. Smiling weakly, I was surprised at how much it meant to have someone do those simple things for me. Rodney used to. We took turns; if it wasn’t me recovering, it was him. Our job wasn’t up to OSHA standards. But McKay had also made me laugh. His insults quick-witted and sure. I didn’t realize I was staring at the bed until Ronon was back with a glass of water and observed, “It’s just a bed.”
I shook my head. “No - it’s not,” I said, crawling in, and being careful of my arm.
His brooding forehead wrinkled at my cryptic statement, but he set the water down, and shrugged a hand at it. “Water, take your pills like Doc ordered. Do you need anything else?”
Funny. That question coming from anyone else would’ve seen solicitous. Coming from Ronon, it almost seemed like a dare. “I’m good,” I assured him.
He hesitated, and I’m not sure if it was because he didn’t believe me, or if there was something he wanted to say. Finally, he said, “Okay.” He turned, and headed towards my door. It wasn’t far, so my window of opportunity to ask was shrinking rapidly, but I wanted to ask if he still trusted me to lead - blame it on the pills making me vulnerable, sappy…stupid.
When the door opened, and he stepped through, all I managed to do was let out the deep breath I’d taken. When it shut, I shook my head again at my cowardice. I needed to know what that wall between us meant. Sure, I’d always kept a distance, friendly, but not open. Ronon and I had never sat around the fire, him listening as I admitted to having sex at thirteen with Jamie Rogers, the hottest girl in eighth grade. Part of the reason was probably because Ronon would’ve snickered and said he killed his first Wraith at thirteen; what took you so long?
“Rodney,” I said to the air. “This sucks.”
Chapters 6-10